DPS Warrior Levelling - Macros And Builds
By: Archy
I’ve levelled a Warrior to 50 and everything pre Greenscale on Deepstrike, mainly as a tank, but ended up doing a lot of DPS runs as well. I’m about to re-level Archy up to the same glory on Fae so I thought I’d revisit what I’d done and share it.
Warriors are actually really quite easy to level as they can make extensive use of macros to destroy things. You can pretty much use a single macro to kill anything, however, I’ll show you how to get the best out of your macros as you’re levelling up.
With these macros, you can create them and paste in the contents in their entirety right from level 1. Because the macro uses the first ability that it finds in order, your best available move will always be used. If you haven’t trained for it yet, it will just get ignored. The only problem is, your General Tab will fill up with macro failure spam, which as far as I know, can’t be turned off yet.
Single Target Builder (I bind to E)
#show Path of the Wind
suppressmacrofailures
petattack
cast Rising Waterfall
cast Turn the Blade
cast Diversion Strike
cast Frenzied Strike
cast Inescapable Fury
cast Path of the Wind
cast Backhanded Blow
cast Power Strike
Single Target Finisher (bound to F)
#show Tearing Slash
suppressmacrofailures
cast Strike Like Iron
cast Deathblow
cast Feral Sweep
cast Bladefury
cast Tearing Slash
cast Punishing Blow
AOE Builder (bound to R)
#show Slashing Strike
suppressmacrofailures
petattack
cast Frenzied Strike
cast Inescapable Fury
cast Backhanded Blow
cast Slashing Strike
cast Mighty Blow
AOE Finisher (bound to G3, or alternatively CTRL-F)
#show Titan's Strike
suppressmacrofailures
cast Proper Timing
cast Titan's Strike
cast Bladefury
cast Feral Sweep
cast Scales of Justice
Interrupt (Bound to mouse 2)
#show Bash
suppressmacrofailures
cast Furious Rage
cast Flinching Strike
cast Bash
cast Face Slam
You’ll notice that some macros contain abilities that aren’t in any of my specs listed here. This is so I can have better re-use of my macros when I switch builds (e.g. especially for interrupts). The key with these macros is just to spam them. If there's one enemy, spam E until you have 3 charges. Then spam F 2-3 times. If there's more than one, spam R until you have 3 charges, then spam CTRL-F a few times.
You’re not going to have much survivability with this build, so I’d suggest you bring at least 20 health pots whenever you leave town. You’re going to want to pull 2-3 mobs and AOE them down, making sure your pet is tanking at least one of them. Have your pet on Passive, and use a two hander. If you want to be a little cleverer about your rotation rather than just bashing one macro, try to weave in a Fierce Strike every 15 seconds. If you do it right, you can generate a very slight DPS increase over just spamming the single target macro. But only very slight. You can also get a slight DPS increase if you take Strike Like Iron out of the Single Target Finisher macro… still use it every time it’s up, but don’t use it if you can Deathblow an enemy to death. If you just wanna kill stuff and watch tv, stick to the macros.
Solo Levelling
1-20 10 Beast / 12 Champion / 4 Paragon
The key part here is getting your pet to tank using Protective Companion. If you have a lot of energy, throw in an ‘Interrupt’ (macro) as it’s off the global cooldown.
20-30 16 Beast / 20 Champion / 4 Paragon
You still want to use Protective Companion, even when Slayer’s Bearing becomes available, keep using Soldier’s Bearing as you probably won’t have a hug chance to crit with the gear you have at this stage.
Now above 30, you need to make a choice which way you want to go as Protective Companion is no longer of any use. I will continue to work through the DPS spec levelling of a Warrior, and show the alternative later. If you prefer a slightly slower, but safer way, see the alternative.
30-40 23 Beast / 26 Champion / 4 Paragon
You want to get 26 points in Champion first in order to get Bladefury. Awesome at ripping through multiple mobs and a huge increase to your DPS in dungeons. Then up the Beast tree to get the Greater Primal Companion, which you will also use Enraged Companion with.
Now without a pet tank, you have to be careful about how many mobs you pull. Sure they’ll go down fast, but just be careful.
50 25 Beast / 31 Champion / 10 Paragon
Finish going up the Beastmaster tree first, then Champ, then Paragon. You’ll notice that all these builds use very few of the +Hit skills as I’ve found you don’t really need them unless you’re killing mobs that are 3+ levels above you…which you shouldn’t be doing because you’re a glass cannon.
This build doesn't care much for bleeds, since I dropped backhanded blow, but it focuses on using the power of the paragon's moves, Rising Waterfall and Path of the Wind. My reason for not focussing on bleeds + backhanded blow is that they just don't seem to add up on paper... unless I'm missing something. This may change in 1.2 as Flesh Rip also comes OFF the global cooldown once again.
Again, remember to throw in an interrupt if you’re finding you have more than 50% energy.
SAFER ALTERNATIVE (and can pull twice as many mobs)
This alternative focuses on self healing and being able to pull 5 or 6 mobs at once and slowly aoeing them down. You will need a sword/mace and shield.
Macros
Single Target Builder
#show Rising Waterfall
suppressmacrofailures
cast Rising Waterfall
cast Disarming Counterblow
cast Retaliation
cast Aggressive Block
cast Sweeping Strike
cast Reckless Strike
cast Pin Target
cast Power Strike
cast Pacifying Strike
Single Target Finisher
Same macro as for Beastmaster DPS above
AOE Builder
#show Paladin's Reprisal
suppressmacrofailures
cast Paladin's Reprisal
cast Disarming Counterblow
cast Retaliation
cast Aggressive Block
cast Inescapable Fury
cast Sweeping Strike
cast Promise of Steel
cast Slashing Strike
cast Mighty Blow
cast Light's Decree
AOE Finisher
Scales of Justice (no macro Required)
At 30 10 Champ / 26 Paladin / 4 Paragon
At 40 11 Champ / 32 Paladin / 10 Paragon
At 50 20 Champ / 32 Paladin / 14 Paragon
Please note that this is all before the 1.2 patch, but from the looks of the notes, not a whole lot will change with these builds.
A note on gearing your DPS Warrior
Up until about level 35, you want to focus more on getting items with attack power. After this point Crit becomes more important.
You’re going to want to get all the Crit you can get at 50. Plate DPS gear kinda sucks for this, so some of your best in slot items are actually leather epics, particularly the chest and shoulders. It sucks to have to roll against Rogues… You should probably spend your plaques of achievement on leather epics with crit.
Edit: Added Pally Safe alternative DPS Macros