Season of Discovery Warrior Guide - Best Builds, Runes, and Rotation

Hello and a hearty welcome to the most complete WoW Season of Discovery Warrior guide. Here, you'll discover comprehensive details on mastering both Warrior class roles in WoW SoD. All classes have been massively improved with the introduction of runes, and Warriors are no exception. Both roles have become much stronger. That said, players must consider these runes and create their builds around them. That’s what this guide is all about!

Warrior is SoD and specializes in two roles - melee DPS and tank. We'll cover everything you need to know to excel as a rage-injected Warrior-DPS, helping you be at your best in any content Phase. First, we’ll go over the PROs and CONs of playing a Warrior Season of Discovery with any spec, and then we’ll get to talking about leveling tips, the best runes, etc.

First and foremost, you must decide on the race, but which one has the best passives for the Warriors? We’ll get into that, too. Next, we’ll dive into stat priorities so that you understand what gear will be great for you and which can be called utter “trash.” What’s even more exciting is that we will present you with the best Warrior build for each role so that you’ll have all you need to kick butt as a Warrior in the Season of Discovery.

 

SoD Warrior Phase 4 Changes

There aren't that many changes for the Warrior class except for the new runes in Phase 4. Some older runes got replaced by the new ones that inherited the old rune's acquisition steps. The runes that got replaced became skills that you can now find in the Skill Book. Some runes changed the slot that you engrave them into:

Now, another major change is the new ring slot runes that increase your proficiency using different skills. Those skills include weapon types, defense, range weapons, etc. These runes are shared between several classes. Finally, Molten Core raid is the source of new BiS gear, which we will definitely list in this guide in a special section.

If you're interested in finding these new runes, we recommend heading over to our guide dedicated to all Warrior Runes that explains how to find each one.

Warrior PROs and CONs

When it comes to this class, Warrior PROs and CONs in Season of Discovery haven’t changed much. The DPS spec hasn’t changed a lot, but it has improved and become even stronger. The tanking spec рфму changed in the way that it now prefers to use a shield. But let’s look at the class in general terms. The good, the bad, and everything in between.

The Warrior PROs are:

• DPS Viability: Warriors remain extremely strong in end-game content, maintaining their status from Classic as a top DPS class.
• Versatility: Ability to off-tank in emergencies and deliver strong cleave DPS.
• Tankiness: As DPS, they are very tanky due to wearing mail gear and having high passive HP.
• Strong Damage Output: Particularly effective in cleave scenarios.
• Powerful Cooldowns: Access to damage-boosting cooldowns like Flagellation and Consumed By Rage.

Alas, there are also some weaknesses as well. The Warrior CONs include:

• Gear Dependence: DPS performance heavily relies on gear; falling behind can significantly impact effectiveness.
• Unique Resource Reliance: Performance is closely tied to weapon upgrades.
• Low Mobility: Initially suffers from low mobility until access to skills like Intercept.
• Incomplete Rotation: Until reaching level 40, the rotation feels incomplete.
• Mediocre AoE Threat: Limited AoE threat generation due to lack of scaling on Thunder Clap.

This should give you a good idea about how effective the class is at what it does and help you decide whether you should play it or not.

How to Play Warrior in Season of Discovery

When it comes to answering the question of how to play Warrior in WoW SoD, there’s no one simple guideline. First, you must decide which role you want to fulfill - DPS or tank. From there, you will pick your Warrior's best runes and start building around them. That said, if you want to play the DPS role, its early stages involve a nuanced approach to its attack rotation. Key abilities like Rend and  Overpower play a crucial role, offering more strategic depth than merely relying on Heroic Strike. Rend, with its damage over time, and Overpower, which becomes available after an enemy dodges, provide substantial base damage. This approach is particularly effective against enemies with lower health pools. Another essential tactic in your arsenal is the consistent application of Sunder Armor, especially when facing high HP elites or minibosses. BLOG20

As a Warrior Tank, your primary role is to manage threats and ensure you're the main focus of enemy attacks, protecting your group. Early on, focus on building and maintaining threats through your abilities. Use Shield Block strategically to reduce incoming damage and prevent high-damage critical strikes. It's crucial to apply key debuffs like Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap to weaken enemies, reducing the damage they deal to your group. Also, manage your rage effectively, using it to maintain a steady flow of threats while avoiding waste. Your goal is to keep enemies focused on you, minimizing the damage to your teammates.

In summary, if you understand the purpose of each role, you will be able to beat any activity in the game, whether it is the solo content, WoW Season of Discovery Warrior PvP, dungeons, or raids.

Warrior Best Race in WoW Season of Discovery

Here, we present a concise table outlining the best race choices for Warriors, both for DPS and Tank roles. This selection is based on various factors, including racial abilities, weapon skills, and specific advantages in PvE and PvP scenarios.

In summary, your best Warrior race in WoW SoD is either Humans or Orcs due to their weapon skill passives and other racial benefits. For the Tank role, Humans again are a top choice for Alliance, while Orcs, Trolls, and Taurens each offer unique advantages for Horde, making them suitable based on your specific playstyle and preferences.

Warrior Stat Priority

Stat Priorities are a bit different for each role.

For DPS:

1. Strength - This is a primary stat for Warrior DPS, directly increasing your attack power. Higher attack power means more damage dealt with each hit, which in turn leads to more efficient rage generation. The more rage you have, the more abilities you can use, thus increasing your overall DPS.
2. Hit Chance - Extremely crucial up to the 6% soft hit cap. Increasing your hit chance reduces the likelihood of missing attacks. Since missed attacks generate no rage, having a high hit chance is vital for maintaining a steady flow of rage.
3. Critical Strike Chance - This stat increases the likelihood of your attacks dealing double damage. A higher critical strike chance not only boosts your damage output but also influences your rage generation. Critical hits often generate more rage, allowing for more frequent use of abilities and contributing to a higher overall DPS.
4. Agility - While not as prioritized as the other stats, agility still plays a role in Warrior DPS. It provides a slight increase in critical strike chance and armor. The boost in critical strike chance contributes to more frequent critical hits, thereby enhancing both damage output and rage generation.

For Tanks:

1. Stamina - a crucial stat for Warrior Tanks, as it directly increases your total health pool. A larger health pool means you can withstand more damage before falling, enhancing your survivability in combat. 
2. Hit Chance - Essential for ensuring your attacks and abilities successfully land on the target. A higher hit chance reduces the variability in your threat generation, making it more consistent and reliable.
3. Agility - Offers a balanced benefit for both offense and defense. It increases your critical strike chance, which can lead to more frequent procs of abilities like Revenge, enhancing your threat generation. 
4. Strength - Primarily an offensive stat for Warrior Tanks, it enhances your threat generation through abilities like Devastate.
5. Armor - Directly contributes to your damage mitigation by reducing the amount of physical damage taken. 

Best Warrior Runes Season of Discovery

Warriors have access to a number of powerful runes. Your best Warrior Season of Discovery runes will depend on the role that you choose to pursue. Therefore, here are your best runes for tanks and DPS.

Best Warrior DPS Runes

• Rampage  (Wrists)- a long lasting buff that incrementally increases the Attack Power by 2% at a time.
• Flagellation Rune (Chest) - Activating Bloodrage or Berserker Rage grants a 25% bonus to Physical damage done for 12 seconds. This rune is highly effective for burst phases or when you want to dump rage.
• Single-Minded Fury Rune (hands) - Dual-wielding increases physical damage and movement speed by 10%. It is ideal for duel-wielding warriors, enhancing both damage output and mobility.
• Consumed by Rage Rune (legs) - Grants a 20% melee damage bonus for 12 seconds or up to 12 swings after exceeding 80 Rage. This rune requires careful rage management for a consistent damage bonus.
• Enraged Regeneration Rune (legs) - offers strong self-healing on a cooldown, making it valuable for survivability in solo play or dungeons.

 

Best Warrior Tank Runes

• Rune of Defense Specialization (ring) - defense skill gets increased by 25. Essential for any tank.
• Shield Mastery (Head) - increases the damage dealt if you have a shield plus reduces the duration of all Disarm debuffs applied to you.
• Warbringer Rune (Chest) - Charge, Intercept, and Intervene are usable in combat and in any stance, removing movement impairing effects when activated. This rune is crucial for maintaining rage and closing gaps after knockbacks.
• Blood Frenzy Rune (Chest) - Gain 3 Rage each time you deal Bleed damage. It is useful for additional rage generation from Rend but becomes less relevant with the Devastate rune.
• Devastate Rune (Hands) - In Defensive Stance with a shield, Sunder Armor also deals 100% weapon damage, increased by 10% per Sunder Armor application on the target. A key rune for Warrior tanks, enhancing threat generation and damage output.
• Furious Thunder Rune (Legs) - Thunder Clap increases attack delay by an additional 6%, can be used in any stance, and generates 50% more threat. This rune enhances AoE threat generation and is effective in slowing enemy attacks.
• Consumed By Rage Rune (Legs) - Enrages the warrior, granting a 20% melee damage bonus for 12 seconds after exceeding 80 Rage. An alternative pants slot rune for increased threat generation outside of AoE situations.
• Focused Rage Rune: Reduces the Rage cost of Shield Block and Thunder Clap, improving resource management and survivability.

Every rune offers unique improvements tailored to the diverse approaches of Warrior gameplay, emphasizing aspects like damage output and combat strategies. Acquiring these runes can be a challenging task, given their spread across various Azeroth locations. To streamline this acquisition, you can buy Season of Discovery Rune boosting from Skycoach. Opting for this service guarantees that experienced WoW professionals will adeptly gather the crucial runes needed to enhance your Warrior's capabilities. BLOG20

Warrior Leveling Guide in WoW Season of Discovery

Whether you are a Tank or a DPS, your Warrior leveling in WoW Season of Discovery experience will be different. 

When leveling as a Warrior DPS, it's crucial to employ strategies like Hamstring kiting to maintain distance from enemies and to keep First Aid skills updated due to the class's limited self-healing. Avoid overusing Heroic Strike due to its high rage cost, and ensure your weapon is always up-to-date, as Warrior leveling heavily relies on weapon strength. Carrying food is also beneficial for healing between pulls. While Warriors struggle with solo leveling due to mediocre damage, poor self-sustain, and high gear dependency, they excel in group settings, particularly with healer support. Their unique ability to generate power from both taking and dealing damage allows them to thrive in continuous combat situations, and they become more formidable with AoE abilities later on. Besides, you can skip a few abilities that your role doesn’t need at all:

• Shield Block
•  Mocking Blow

Leveling as a Warrior Tank in vanilla World of Warcraft, particularly in the Protection spec, has traditionally been challenging. However, in the Season of Mastery, the addition of the Devastate rune could significantly improve this experience, depending on its availability. Early on, Warriors struggle with efficiently converting rage into damage, leading to slow kills and high risk in tough situations. Devastate, available earlier than Whirlwind, offers a more effective damage-per-rage ability, potentially transforming the leveling process by replacing less efficient abilities like Rend and Sunder Armor.

Key survival strategies include avoiding overcommitting to fights, using a Defensive Stance to escape when overwhelmed, and utilizing food and bandages for recovery. Focusing on green quests, which are slightly below your level, can also offer a more efficient leveling experience due to easier fights and still reasonable XP gains. However, as a Protection Warrior, you'll miss out on the benefits of the Victory Rush rune, as it occupies the same slot as Devastate. Plus, there are some skills that you can simply skip:

•  Rend ranks once you unlock Devastate
•  Overpower past rank 1
•  Shield Bash past rank 1
•  Mocking Blow past rank 1
•  Slam past rank 1
•  Intercept past rank 1
•  Pummel past rank 1

These tips highlight the importance of understanding the unique mechanics and roles of the Warrior 1.15.3 class in leveling. 

Even though leveling a Warrior is quite straightforward, you might want to save time and dive straight into higher-level content. SkyCoach’s Powerleveling services offer a convenient solution. Let experienced WoW veterans swiftly advance your character to your desired level, allowing you to bypass the grind and focus on the aspects of the game you enjoy most. If you have any questions or specific requests, the SkyCoach managers are always available to assist you.

 

Best Warrior Builds Season of Discovery

As we’ve said before, there’re really only two best Warrior builds for WoW SoD, one of which is melee combat oriented, and the other is for ranged combat. Keep in mind that these builds are not the only effective options, and they are likely to evolve over time. All of the builds provided are tailored for Phase 4, which covers talents up to level 60.

Tank Build (Prot spec)
 

Deep Protection is currently the most viable spec, while Fury Devastate is expected to catch up. The necessity of landing Shield Slam for maintaining threat and gaining the Defender's Resolve buff is critical; missing it can severely hinder the tank's performance. Multi-target threat remains a challenge, as the radius of Thunder Clap hasn't increased, requiring close proximity to mobs, and Shockwave may not be sufficient to compete with heavy AoE DPS classes.

Overall, Warrior Protection tanks are highly effective in single-target scenarios but face difficulties in maintaining multi-target threat. This makes them powerful but situationally limited, especially in AoE-heavy encounters.

DPS Build (Fury spec)
 

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Warrior Best in Slot Gear WoW Season of Discovery

The following list of the Warrior Best in Slot gear for Phase 4 includes both DPS and tank roles, but it is by no means final. Some of these are just the items available to you during Phase 2 and 3. We will update this list once the real BiS is determined.

Although our guide covers the optimal pre-raid gear for Phase 4, it's crucial to remember that the next phases will feature a raid with even more superior BiS gear. To acquire these elite items, you might want to Buy Molten Core Raid Boost from SkyCoach. This service guarantees that our skilled WoW professionals will handle the raid for you, making sure you obtain the highly sought-after rare gear.

Warrior Rotation

Once again, your WoW Warrior rotation Season of Discovery will be different for either of the two roles.

DPS rotation

1. Execute: Always the top priority whenever available, due to its high damage potential.
2. Slam: Use procs from Blood Surge as the highest priority outside of the Execute phase.
3. Bloodthirst: Use this ability on cooldown.
4. Heroic Strike: With sufficient rage, especially when fully world buffed, this ability should be used almost continuously. If not fully buffed, use it more sparingly.
5. Whirlwind: Use on cooldown.
6. Overpower: Use only when all higher-priority abilities are on cooldown. It’s not worth delaying Bloodthirst or Whirlwind for Overpower.
7. Raging Blow: Although it deals significant damage, prioritize it below more rage-intensive abilities.
8. Hamstring: The lowest priority, use Hamstring only when you have excess rage and global cooldowns (GCDs). Its main function is to proc abilities and enchants like Windfury, Flurry, and Crusader.

Tank Single-Target Rotation

1. Shield Slam: Always start with Shield Slam to activate the Defender's Resolve buff, which is crucial for scaling a Protection Warrior Tank.
2. Shockwave: Follow with Shockwave, as it’s highly reliable for generating threat and cannot be dodged or parried. Even in single-target encounters, it’s effective since blocked hits still register as critical hits.
3. Devastate: Use Devastate when Shield Slam and Shockwave are on cooldown to maximize damage. Although it can proc weapon effects multiple times, it doesn’t gain extra benefits from the Sword and Board rune unless damage is dealt.
4. Heroic Strike: Queue Heroic Strike when you have over 35 rage with world buffs or 50 rage without them. It’s a strong threat-building tool if used correctly, but using it with low critical strike chance can interfere with more important abilities, reducing your overall impact.

Tank AoE Rotation

1. Thunder Clap: Start AoE encounters with Thunder Clap. While Shield Slam generates more threat, it's less effective when dealing with multiple targets.
2. Shockwave: Follow up with Shockwave for additional damage and threat. Make sure to position yourself to hit as many mobs as possible. Thunder Clap remains a higher priority due to Shockwave lacking its own threat modifier.
3. Shield Slam: Once you've used Thunder Clap and Shockwave, cast Shield Slam to activate the Defender's Resolve buff.
4. Devastate: Use Devastate as your primary threat and damage tool when other spells are on cooldown.
5. Cleave: Use Cleave when you have over 55 rage without world buffs. With world buffs, you can use it when you have 40 rage or more.

Warrior Best Professions in WoW Season of Discovery

Choosing the Warrior best professions in WoW SoD can significantly impact your class effectiveness in various roles, whether you're tanking, healing, or dealing damage. Each profession offers unique advantages that can enhance your gameplay. 

• Engineering: A must-have for all Classic WoW versions, Engineering is essential for Warriors. It offers a range of explosives for AoE damage and threat, unique trinkets for buffs, debuffs, and resistances, a crucial shield for AoE tanking, repair bots, and teleporters for easy Azeroth navigation. It's packed with quality-of-life benefits and is vital for optimal tanking performance.
• Blacksmithing: Potentially crucial for end-game content, Blacksmithing in the lvl 25 bracket offers the BoP Shifting Silver Breastplate, exclusive to blacksmiths.
• Mining: Essential for gathering ores and smelting bars to level Engineering and Blacksmithing. It's recommended to train Mining on an alt character, such as a Hunter for faster travel or a Rogue for stealthy exploration.

For DPS Warriors, Engineering stands out as the only profession offering significant PvE and PvP advantages. Even at level 25, the minor DPS increase from dynamite and other consumables surpasses other professions, with benefits increasing as the level cap rises.

Warrior Best Consumables

Regarding the selection of the best Warrior consumables, it varies based on the content you're engaging in. The following compilation includes all the essential consumables for any activity you partake in, ensuring you're equipped to be the best PvE Warrior out there.

• Blackfathom Sharpening Stone — +2% hit for 30 min. Ideal for DPS in Blackfathom Deeps raid.
• Coarse Sharpening Stone — +3 damage for 30 min. Useful for both DPS and Tanks for increased threat and damage.
• Elixir of Lesser Agility — +8 Agility for 1 hour. It benefits DPS with increased crit and Tanks with added mitigation.
• Elixir of Ogre's Strength — +8 Strength for 1 hour. Enhances threat and damage, suitable for both DPS and Tanks.
• Elixir of Fortitude — +120 HP for 1 hour. Increases survivability, is important for Tanks, and beneficial for DPS.
• Elixir of Defense — +150 Armor for 1 hour. Primarily for Tanks to improve survivability.
• Soothing Turtle Bisque — +8 Stamina for 15 min. Increases survivability, useful for both roles.
• Rumsey Rum Black Label — +15 Stamina for 15 min. Enhances survivability, advantageous for Tanks.
• Greater Healing Potion — Instantly heals 455-585 HP. Crucial for Tanks and helpful for DPS in emergencies.
• Great Rage Potion — Instantly increases rage by 30-60. Essential for Tanks for on-demand threat; useful for DPS for burst damage.
• Free Action Potion — Immunity to stuns and movement impairing effects for 30 sec. It is vital for Tanks to maintain control and beneficial for DPS to avoid interruptions.
• Solid Dynamite — Inflicts 213 to 287 fire damage in a 5-yard radius. Useful for Tanks for AoE threat; can be used by DPS for additional damage.

Conclusion

To summarise everything, Warriors shine in both DPS and Tank roles, each with distinct strategies and priorities. DPS Warriors excel in dealing high damage and managing rage effectively, using abilities like Rend and Overpower strategically. Tanks focus on threat management and damage mitigation, employing skills like Shield Block and Demoralizing Shout. The choice of race, stat priorities, and runes significantly influences performance. Professions like Engineering and Blacksmithing offer vital advantages while selecting the right consumables is key to maximizing effectiveness in combat. Hope you found this guide useful and that it helps you on your journey through the Season of Discovery

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