The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Leveling Warrior in Wrath

I promise we'll get back to our Ulduar guide for tanks and DPS warriors next week. For this week, however, since we're midway through the sixth month of 2009 and we've seen patches up to 3.1 released (and we're waiting on 3.2) I thought it would be a good idea to go back and cover some of the things a leveling warrior might want discussed. We get emails from all kinds of warriors, and so it's only fair to cover the concerns of warriors who aren't raiding Ulduar but rather just setting foot off of the dock in Howling Fjord.

Before we get started, though, the upcoming Patch 3.2changes for Warriors in their current entirety: Armored to the Teeth: This talent now provides 1/2/3 attack power per 108 armor, up from per 180 armor. Try not to get too excited, people.

First off, I'm often asked about stats for up-and-coming warriors. We have covered some of these beforeback in the beta, but the beta was a year ago now and things have been changed and polished. First off, I'm going to link all the posts of interest to a leveling warrior and discuss how they may have changed, and then I'll try and cover some more general advice.

• Building Up To It covers some target numbers and stats to focus on. I should note that this was written before the changes to Armor Penetration made it much, much better as a DPS stat for warriors: the more ArP you have, the better it is as a DPS stat until you have enough ArP to reduce target armor by 100%.
• We covered Hit and Expertise in two posts, one for DPS warriors and one for Tanks. The tanking post is still accurate as of 3.1, but the talent changes to Arms and Fury mean that there is currently no talent that reduces chance to dodge for Fury Warriors and Arms has both Strength of Arms for passive expertise and Weapon Mastery.
• We discussed the dangers of overstacking a stat to the exclusion of other, also necessary stats.
• Finally, we covered gearing up in a four part post just before Wrath launched Parts one,two, three and four were all published before Wrath itself had actually come out, but they're still reasonably accurate to help your warrior get from 70 to 80, We coveredweapons between 70 and 80 too.

TALENT SPECS FOR LEVELING

Okay, to start with, if this is not your main and you have access to the heirloom shoulders, by all that's holy get them. Especially now that they give you 10% more experience from quests and from mobs you kill, even if you just have an old pair of the leather or mail ones hanging around, send them to your leveling warrior. When I decided to test leveling on my Draenei warrior this month I didn't think it would make that big of a deal, but between his rested bonus and those shoulders he went from 70 to 76 in a matter of days. (I'm letting him catch back up on the rested before I try and get him the rest of the way up.) 

We've covered talent specs for leveling warriors before, but I'll touch on it again here to say that for leveling either Arms or Prot are probably the easiest to gear for and are both strong for the job. I'm leveling my Draenei Fury purely out of spite. I leveled my Tauren Arms and my human Protection, and so far I'd still give the nod to Protection as a really good leveling spec and my personal favorite for dealing with big trash pulls and group quests you may want to try and solo. A lot of this will depend on the gear your warrior has as you start the climb between 70 and 80, though. If you're bringing a warrior you started a couple of months ago to Northrend in Outland quest greens, Arms is probably a stronger choice for leveling than Protection since there's lots of decent Northrend greens that are itemized towards an Arms playstyle. If you're bringing an uber-geared Sunwell warrior out of retirement, go with whatever your gear supports.

Talents will, of course, vary by your spec, but some abilities go across the board and benefit all warriors: we get Shattering Throw at level 71 (since you won't get Heroic Throw until 80, Shattering Throw is not to be underestimated as a cheap pulling tool as well as a PvP talent), and the incredibly handy Enraged Regeneration at level 75, followed by Heroic Throw at 80. You also get new tanks of all your pre-existing abilities, of course. Unlike the 1-60 game but similar to Burning Crusade, you'll basically be able to train something every level so don't go too long without visiting the trainer.

QUESTING ZONES

I have to say that 70 to 80 as a warrior is much less painful than it was to level a warrior back in the old days. I promise not to regale you with tales of leveling my warrior in Winterspring uphill in the snow both ways, but I will say that as long as you play with reasonable attentiveness you'll find it much less of a slog than it was to kill oozes in Un'Goro and get diseased over and over again. I still stand by my first impression from all the way back into the Wrath beta and advise you to do both Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra, but it's not strictly speaking necessary. You could easily go from the Fjord to Dragonblight to do theWrathgate questline (which, for a leveling warrior, not only has several decent rewards along the way, but is also a heck of a nice questline if you've not done it yet.) 

You'll of course want to do the Borean Tundra questlines to get access to some very nice blues to start the climb to 80 with, but there are similarly rewarding quests in both starting zones. If you can manage to do the quests around Utgarde Keep and the Nexus you can accumulate quite a few blue quest items to supplement whatever gear you had when you arrived. Grizzly Hills has two major questlines and a third that points you towards Drak'Tharon Keep, Zul'Drak has the Ampitheatre of Anguish in addition to quests for a tanking weapon and ones that point you towards Gun'Drak, and the whole of Sholozar Basin has significant quests that involve Hemet Nesingwary and the Avatar of Feya. It's actually quite possible (even, dare I say it, easy) to level to 80 with minimal instance time if that's what you want to do, but with instances in both starting zones, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills (Drak'Tharon Keep straddles GH and Zul'Drak), ZD and finally the Storm Peaks having two five man dungeons, there's certainly no lack of options. 

WRATH REPUTATIONS

As we covered in the gearing posts, you don't want to ignore the various factions of Northrend (please pick up a tabard for every faction available as soon as you can, even ones you won't immediately need to work on like the Kirin Tor), and it's fairly easy for a level 77 warrior to begin working on his Argent Crusade, Knights of the Ebon Blade and Sons of Hodir reputations once you reach Icecrown and the Storm Peaks. There are long, rewarding questlines for each of these factions (the Argent Crusade ones actually help you unlock the Ebon Blade ones, even) and in addition at level 77 you can even start working on your Argent Tournament questing. Generally speaking, even if you're not completely done with the other zones you can probably afford to go to Icecrown and the Storm Peaks as soon as you can fly in Northrend and start working on those reputations (Don't forget about championing to make those grinds go faster.) The Sons of Hodir have no tabard so you'll have to work that reputation via the daily quests and with Relic of Ulduar turn ins/Everfrost chips. 

As a warrior I would try and get my Ebon Blade reputation to at least revered for the Arcanum of Torment and see about getting Argent Crusade to revered as well for the tanking helm enchant. Since the Argent Crusade has some quests in Dragonblight and a hub in Zul'Drak as well as a long quest chain in Icecrown and the Ebon Blade has quests and dailies in Icecrown, you can probably come close to these goals without even making use of championing or thedaily quest in Dalaran for reputation. Adding those in and getting those reputations to revered is not difficult at all, and can even be done before you actually reach level 80. Once you're at revered with the aforementioned championable factions, the Wyrmrest Accord has a surprising amount of tanking gear you should consider. The Kirin Tor gloves are solid, but by now you'll probably be able to get better via Emblems of Heroism (the Tier 7 glove token) before you'll make the reputation needed to purchase them, assuming you don't just get an equivalent drop running Naxx-10.

If you're a new warrior or just new to Northrend, please feel free to ask for additional advice or an answer to a question I missed in the comments and if necessary I'll revisit this topic next week. If not, back to Ulduar. 

Blood Pact: leveling a warlock, 10 to 40

Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "Haha! You're doing very well for yourself, young warlock. Given time, infernals and dreadlords will bow before you! But until that time comes, you must still rely on weapons forged by the hands of the mortal races." ~ Kaal Soulreaper

So, you want to level a warlock, huh? Well, I'm not going to tell you how to do it. No sir! If you've come here thinking that Blood Pact is going to give you a step-by-step plan of what you should do to get your warlock from level 10 to 40 -- some kind of list of quests, zones, instances and mobs -- then you're deluded mister; we don't do that here. What you need is a generic leveling guide of the sort you can find all over the internet. Seriously, don't pay for one though; you can get plenty of decent guides for free. Personally I use Tour Guide andCarbonite. They work really well together and make the whole process much faster. There are other tools, but I know these are good.

What Blood Pact is going to do is talk about what warlocks going through these levels are all about. It's not going to be hugely detailed at any one level because, frankly, you won't be at any level for long. We'll look at the new spells you will gain and how you can apply them, we'll have a gander at these talent things you can now play with, and we'll talk about the gear you will be wearing and wielding on the way. So send the imp off to make a fresh brew and settle in for some lock leveling.

So, I'm assuming you have created your warlock and progressed through the starting zone. If not then you're reading the wrong guide, you want the birth of a warlock article we did last month. We ended that one with your shadow-caster bumbling about near their home city and probably getting told that it's about time they learned to summon a voidwalker. Again, I'm not going to talk too much about that as I have already covered it in articles for the control of minions and also voidwalkers and threat. If you didn't read these articles before then now is a good time to do so as you'll probably be using your blueberry for a while.

Talents

The stock answer for what talent tree to use when leveling a lock is "Affliction till 50 then demonology till 80". This is a fair guide and you'll not go far wrong with it. It's quite possibly the fastest and/or easiest way to go. The problem I have with it is that there is so much variety in the warlock talents that being this formulaic is missing out on a lot. Also, leveling through the early stages is so quick and easy these days that it's a perfect opportunity to experiment. So if you want to dump points into anything that takes your fancy then go for it, I say. You can always pay to change them later.

That said, some of you are sat there shouting "To hell with fun, I want my lock to be 80 NOW! Tell me the quick way." So I shall. Destruction can get some very quick kills but leaves you kinda drained after each one. Demonology gives some solid minions but doesn't pack that much of a punch. Affliction has decent damage output with excellent resource regeneration; this makes it highly efficient over the long haul.

You'll probably be using your voidwalker (certainly at the start) so while he tanks you want to DoT the mob up with CoA, Corruption and Immolate. Use CoA first as it lasts the longest and lets him build up some threat. The idea with the void is to let him take the pain, so slow and steady damage on the target keeps them on him. If you Life Tap before you engage (to full mana) and then place DoTs you can then recover the health with Drain Life. If you find that mobs are dying before all your DoTs have run their course, then consider not casting one of them or taking on two mobs at once. Mobs dying before DoTs run out is not the worst thing in the world but it is a waste of mana; this can slow you down.

Given that you'll be DoTting a load, Improved Corruption is a handy talent to pour points into and Improved Life Tap and Soul Siphon also works well with this strategy (Immolate is a destruction spell so doesn't count for Soul Siphon). Improved Drain Soul can help your voidwalker hold threat and also give you a nice mana boost if you time it right -- some people swear by this talent, but I'm less of a fan, it's not bad but if you don't need it then look elsewhere.

Suppression is great for attacking mobs of a higher level, but if you prefer to level through 'green' quests then you might not need this. I prefer to be killing stuff as hard as I can manage and so Suppression is great. You should be looking to get Siphon Life as soon as you can, this used to be just another DoT with some healing but it was re-worked a while back and is simply awesome now. After that you want to stack points intoShadow mastery, also a very powerful talent. How you fill in the gaps is up to you but by level 40 you will probably end up with something like this.

Example level 40 affliction build

You can play about with many of the filler talents as you like and feel your play style dictates. I prefer Grim Reach to Improved Fear as I like to keep plenty of distance and it's all very well slowing a previously feared mob but the friends he ran into are coming at you at full pelt. ICoW is ok if you want to drop CoA (only one curse per target) and it will mean your tank can take more of a beating.

Once you get your succubus (you read about her last week, right?) you are in the realms of drain-tanking. Basically you are the one taking the damage so throw an Immolate at the target, then your instant DoTs and finally Drain Life till they die. It helps to run away from them while you cast those instant spells. The succubus can be either whipping them for extra damage or seducing their friend. This is a fun and fast way to play but not ideal for every situation, don't forget your voidwalker if this is proving tricky.

Spells

• Level 12 - Health Funnel - keep your pet alive while your DoTs kill the mob.
• Level 14 - Drain Life - Great for resource (health/mana) regeneration and drain tanking.
• Level 16 - Unending Breath - Used to be useful before everyone got lungs like pearl divers. The speed boost is quite nice if you have the glyph.
• Level 18 - Create Soulstone - Fantastic spell that I typically forget to keep active on myself.
• Level 18 - Searing Pain - Not particularly great spell for most situations.
• Level 20 - Demon Armor - Replacement for Demon Skin, don't forget to update your action bars.
• Level 20 - Rain of Fire - AoE fireballs from the sky. Nice.
• Level 20 - Ritual of Summoning - Is that a summoning stone in your pocket?
• Level 20 - Summon Succubus - Read all about it!
• Level 20 - Felsteed - Wheee! Giddy Up!

• Level 22 - Eye of Kilrogg - I once killed Illidan with only Eye of Kilrogg and Ritual of Souls; true story.
• Level 24 - Drain Mana - I have used this is AQ once and to solo the Tiger boss in ZG, that's it.
• Level 24 - Sense Demons - If the smell isn't enough...
• Level 24 - Curse of Tongues - Great spell for reducing the damage output of casters, in the same way CoW is for meat-heads.
• Level 26 - Detect Invisibility - By the time you realize you need this buff it's probably too late. Remember, it does not detect stealth.
• Level 28 - Create Firestone - Very nice boost to damage, keep it active all the time.
• Level 28 - Banish - Crowd control for demons.
• Level 30 - Enslave demon - More CC for demons, though I forgot it last week. Handy if somewhat troublesome.
• Level 30 - Hellfire - More AoE, unfortunately not as good as rain of Fire. I like this spell and wish it were worth using more.
• Level 30 - Summon Felhunter - Our own puppy and subject of the next 'Meet the minions'.

• Level 32 - Curse of Elements - This can be very handy if you are with other casters, though oom-chickens and unholy death knights can apply it easier.
• Level 32 - Shadow Ward - Actually very handy if you remember to use it when about to take shadow damage.
• Level 36 - Create Spellstone - If you're not leveling as destruction then swap to using this weapon buff.
• Level 40 - Howl of Terror - AoE fear; fun and danger in one spell.
• Level 40 - Dreadsteed - Epic mount, oooh yes! Fast and Furious

Gear

Historically any cloth gear with stamina and intellect was considered warlock loot. This is still true to some degree as we do get more out of stamina than other casters (bigger health pool means bigger mana pool). With the introduction of the Glyph of Life Tap and the changes to make Life Tap work off spirit, this is now also a stat worth having. More on warlock glyphs in this previous article.

Spell power is highly desirable as a green stat. Look out for those randomly enchanted items: ...of the Eagle, ...of Spell Power and even ...of Healing are all good (healing bonus was converted to spell power a while back). There are a few items that stand out during leveling but they are too many to mention here. I do remember the robe from the final boss in RFDbeing one I didn't replace for quite a while. It might be worth reading the comments for further suggestions.

Powerleveling

If you have a character at level 80 and want to shower your new lock with gifts, then the heirloom items are well worth going for. Primarily I would suggest the ones that give an experience boost (Tattered Dreadmist Mantle and Tattered Dreadmist Robe). After that theDignified Headmaster's Charge is fabulous and very warlocky (I couldn't bring myself to ever throw away my original Headmaster's Charge). Finally the trinkets are fabulous, especially at low levels where you don't see them dropping from mobs. I would suggest the Discerning Eye of the Beast before the Swift Hand of Justice.

If you really want to get through the levels as fast as possible then you could try and persuade a level 80 character to boost you through Deadmines, Wailing Caverns orShadowfang Keep till 20 then the various wings of Scarlet Monastery until 40. This is quick leveling but you'll learn nothing about playing a warlock that way. Warlocks are hugely fun to play at all levels with loads of options and variety, so get out there and bring terror to the populous.

Addendum

Somebody mentioned something about being able to gain experience in battlegrounds. I guess you could do that if you like that kind of thing.