Tips for a new Warrior

[Raev]

Originally Posted by serjordanmormont [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh really? I mostly want to group with people. I have no idea if I want to raid. Am I better off going paladin in that case?

Cucumbers gave you the short answer; let me give you the detailed answer.

I have a 60 warrior (Sakuragi) and he's quite solid in small groups. His biggest weakness is that Raev is better! The Feverblade/Sword of the Shissar combination is very solid threat with 255 dex, and with 5400 HP/1300 AC it's not even necessary to slow most low 50s mobs. And for tougher stuff he has evasive and defensive discs; asking Team Debuff to wait 10-12 seconds before firing the tash/slow cannon on a 1-2 minute fight isn't that much of a sacrifice.

This will not be your experience leveling an untwinked warrior XP groups! You can't afford good weapons and haste, and even if you could there are no good high ratio proccing weapons until Frostbringer at 40, and if there were you'd still need dex to make them proc, which you won't have without L60 shaman buffs, and even if you had the dex the fights are so short (<30s vs 20s average to proc with max dex) that your threat would still be very inconsistent. Expect to be tanking about 50% of the time vs a Paladin's 95% of the time. Plus you don't get discs until L52!

But even more than that, if your groupmates do something stupid there is very little you can do on a warrior. Enchanter having trouble on charm breaks? The Paladin can heal him and stun his charmed pet. Monk having trouble splitting? The Paladin can calm. Too many mobs in camp? Paladins get root! Caster mobs wrecking your day? Nothing a few Paladin stuns can't handle. Shadow knights don't have quite the same toolbox, but you at least have rock solid aggro and can split reasonably well with Darkness/Eye of Zomm + FD. Now in a good group this won't be as much of a problem, but you'll be in more bad/mediocre groups than good ones on the way to 60.

I think Warriors are the best tanks in the game at 60, with the best HP, best AC, best DPS, and the best disciplines of any melee. But even then they need good gear and good support. The other 99% of the time, Paladins and Shadowknights are much less frustrating.