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Warrior Comprehensive Talent Review
Arms Talents:
Improved Heroic Strike - “Reduces the Rage cost of your Heroic Strike by 1,2 or 3 Rage points” Max 3 Points - Heroic strike isn’t really all that great of an ability, since this talent gives you a cost saving of 3 rage, but that still doesn’t help with the limitation that Heroic Strike has, which is that is "on next strike". Arms/MS warriors really should waste rage on heroic strike, and fury and protection warrior should always have enough rage coming in so that this talent isn’t as useful as it first seems.

Deflection rank - “Increases your Parry chance by 1,2,3,4,or 5%.” Max 5 points. - Parry is a great skill and makes a great way to start going into the Arms tree.

Improved Rend -“Increases the bleed damage of your Rend ability by 15,25,35%.” Max 3 Points. - This is a horrible talent. I doubt anyone would take it unless it wasn’t a pre-req for Deep Wound. Rend at Rank 7 does 147 damage offer 21 sec; this talent increases that by 51 points. Sure Dots ignore armor, but it is still a drop in the bucket. Deep Wound and Impale make taking this almost mandatory.

Improved Charge - “Increase the amount of rage generated by your Charge ability by 3 or 6.” Max 2 Points. - Charge gives you 15 rage at the start of battle, with this talent that is increase to 21. Now the first hit has no swing timer and if it hits, as an arms warrior this is more then enough for an immediate Mortal Strike Follow-up. With High Crit gear and some luck, you can severely damage opponents with this opening.

Tactical Mastery - “You retain up to 5,10,15,20 or 25 or your rage points when you change stances.” Max 5 Points. - The most important talent in the tree, being able to switch stances quickly at the right time causes a mediocre warrior to be great. This talent makes sure that you have a good amount of rage available to activate the ability that caused you to switch stances.

Improved Thunder Clap - Reduces the cost of your Thunder clap ability by 1,2,3 points.” Max 3 Points. - Thunder clap is VERY situational of a talent. It is really only useful in long PVE fights were the mob is hitting so hard that a 10% slowdown in attack speed actually makes a large difference on the damage output. 20 rage is expensive, but if you are a dps warrior on a boss fight you should have rage available every 30secs to refresh it on the boss.

Improved Overpower - “Increases the Critical Strike chance of your Overpower ability by 25, 50%” Max 2 Points. - Great talent for Arms warriors. Not so much for fury. This talents causes rogues nightmares. Rogues already don’t have a lot of health and an overpower cannot be dodged, blocked or parried. Thus, when overpower is up, you are very likely to get a crit. With large 2 handers that is a power hit. Dual Wielding Fury players are usually in berserker stance, and since you need to be in battle stance to overpower, this isn’t as useful nor as damaging since it only takes the main hand weapon damage.

Anger Management - “Increase the amount of time for your rage to decay out of combat by 30%”. 1 Point. - This ability is currently bugged, but not in a bad way. Rage fades out of combat at a rate of 3 rage per tick. Now, this talent makes it so that you only lose 2 rage per tick, and it does this by giving actually giving you 1 rage point per tick. The bug occurs when you are in combat. The 1 rage point per tick is still active, so you gain 1 rage every 6 seconds. Some what handy.

Deep Wounds - “Your critical strikes cause the opponent to bleed, dealing 20,40,or 60% of your melee weapon’s average damage over 12 sec.” Max 3 Points. - On a critical hit you, put a debuff on the target that cause 60% of you average weapon damage in 12 seconds. Now this doesn’t stack, and is only refreshed on another successful critical in the 12 seconds but it does add up.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization - “Increases the damage you deal with two-handed weapons by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5%.” Max 5 Points. - Rather generic, I personally prefer to specialize in one of the specific weapon choices, but good during leveling when you don’t know what weapon you will find.

Impale - “Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your abilities in Battle, Defensive and Berserker stance by 10 or 20%.” Max 2 Points. - 100% Grade A Good. Things can be immune against it though.

Axe Specialization - “Increases your critical strike chance with axes by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5%.” Max 5 Points - If you want to life by burst damage critical hits is the way to go.

Sweeping Strikes - “Activate to cause your next 5 melee attacks to strike an additional nearby opponent. Cost 30 Rage, Requires Battle Stance, 30sec cooldown.” 1 Point. - Well, everyone takes it to get to Mortal Strike. But Sweeping Strike is useful in solo PVE when fighting 2 targets at the same time, with a lucky string of criticals you can kill both targets with the 5 swing charges that sweeping strike has.

Mace Specialization - “Gives you a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5% chance to stun your target with a mace.” Max 5 Points. - Some people swear by it, others can’t stand it. I personally believe you need a specific weapon like earthshaker in order to take advantage of stunning people.

Sword Specialization - “Gives you a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5% chance to get an extra attack on the same target after dealing damage with your sword.” Max 5 Points. - The tooltip is a bit misleading. Yes you get a 5% chance to hit someone again but now after every swing, your overall weapon swing timer gets reset. So if it does proc off of a special attack, then you will still get another hit, but you will wait your full swing timer again. Example you have a weapon with a 3.8 sec swing. Now you attack, wait 2 seconds use Mortal Strike and Sword Spec talent procs. You hit with MS and the extra Swing, but you now have to wait again 3.8 seconds for your next regular attack and not 1.8 seconds.

Polearm Specialization - “Increases your critical strike chance with polearms by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5%.” Max 5 Points - Same as axe spec.

Improved Hamstring - “Gives your Hamstring ability a 5, 10, or 15% chance to immobilize the target for 5 sec.” Max 3 points. - Hamstring is the worse of any character slows in the game. This improves it so that it so that a little. Good for PVP, but not all that useful in PVE.

Mortal Strike - “A vicious strike that deals weapon damage plus 85, 110, 135, or 160 and wounds the target, reducing the effectiveness of any healing by 50% for 10 sec. Cost 30 rage, 5 yard range, 6 sec cooldown, 4 Ranks” 1 point. - Arguably the best melee attack in the game. It shines in both PVP and PVE. The debuff makes is the kicker in PVP, the 50% heal debuff on the target causes nightmares for all healers. The weapon damage was normalized in patch 1.8 so that all 2 handed weapons are set to 3.4 attack speed, meaning that slower, high damage weapons no longer have an advantage over quicker weapons.

Fury Talents
Booming Voice - “Increases the area of effect and duration of your Battle shout and Demoralizing Shout by 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50%”. Max 5 Points - Not all that great considering the other talent at the same level. Maxed out it increases your demoralizing shout and battle shout, to 45sec and 3 minutes respectively. And increase their range also by 5 and 10 respectively. Overall the 10 rage cost isnt going to break you to cast it more and the range increase isnt all that vital either. Cruelty is a much better talent.

Cruelty - “Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5%” Max 5 Points. - 5% critical hit increase is worth its weight in gold. Take this talent, always.

Improved Demoralizing Shout - “Increases the attack power reduction of your Demoralizing Shout by 8, 16, 24, 32, or 40%.” Max 5 Points. - This talent increase the rank 5 version of Demoralizing shout from 140 to 196. Since 14 AP equal 1 damage per second it is an add decrease of 4.0 dps for a total of 14.0 dps. Great for smaller or fast hitting enemies. Still in order get further into the Fury tree this is a nice place to put points for an arms warrior. Fury should go Unbridled Wrath.

Unbridled Wrath - “Gives you a 8, 16, 24, 32, 40% chance to get an additional rage point when you deal melee damage with a weapon.” Max 5 Points. - Even with the recent nerf, this is still a critical talent for fury warriors. Dual Wielding warriors work well with this, since both weapons count toward the hit. All this talent does is generate 1 rage point, so the hits need to come quickly, hence the reason Arms Warrior should stay away from this talent since their slow 2 Handers just don’t hit often enough.

Improved Cleave - “Increases the bonus damage done by your Cleave ability by 40, 80 or 120%.” Max 3 Points. - The tooltip is a little misleading. This talent ONLY increase the bonus that cleave gives. The rank 5 cleave has a bonus of 50 damage on top of weapon damage so the increase with 3 points in the talent in 60 for a total of a 110 damage bonus to cleave. Yet, to take advantage of this one needs to fight 2 targets often and that isn’t always possible. It's a mediocre talent.

Piercing Howl - "Ability: Causes all enemies near the warrior to be dazed for 6 sec. Cost 10 rage.” 1 Point. - Great talent for many situations. This includes stopping a rush of enemies in both PVP and PVE, and escaping from them or stopping them from escaping. Good talent.

Blood Craze - “Regenerates 1, 2, or 3% of your total Health over 6 sec after being the victim of a critical strike.” Max 3 Points - Consider how much this actually is. At level 60 a warrior usually has 5000 health so this skill gives you back 150 health. Really, you won’t break the bank with this. Only really useful if you plan on using lifesteal enchantments on weapons and equipment that allow you regen health while in combat.

Improved Battle Shout - “Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Battle Shout by 5, 10, 15, 20, 25%.” Max 5 Points - The rank 6 Battle Shout is 185 attack power increase, and with this talent that is upped to 231. That is a dps increase from 13.21 to 16.50 I take it since I can help not only myself but the entire party. The new Rank 7 Battle Shout that is available from AQ20 makes this even better from 232 (16.57dps) to 290 (20.71). Rogues love you for this, since their skills are multiplied by their attack power.

Dual Wield Specialization - “Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25%.” Max 5 Points - Offhand dps is usually only 25%, this increases that to 50%, which at level 60 with 40dps weapons means a 10 dps increase.

Improved Execute - “Reduces the Rage cost of your execute ability by 2, or 5 points.” Max 2 points - 2 points in this talent allows you to execute someone with 10 rage instead of 15. Does make execute more efficient and more bonus points are added on top. Yet the skill can only be used a 20%, so it does seem a little situational.

Enrage - "Gives you a 5, 10, 15, 20, 25% melee damage bonus for 12 sec up to a maximum of 12 melee swings after being the victim of a critical strike.” Max 5 Points. - Great talent that can push a warrior damage over the top. Recently decreased from 40% to 25% increase in damage at 5 points, yet the nerf doesn’t make it less desirable. Good against rogues since they crit a lot. The 12 seconds means about 4 attacks for MS warriors for extra damage.

Improved Slam - "Decrease the casting time of your Slam ability by 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, or 0.5.” Max 5 Points. - Slam is still a substandard attack that is only useful when you are not getting hit yourself. This skill doesn’t change that, though it makes it a little better. Still, 5 points make this an expensive talent for a very limited skill.

Death Wish – “Ability: When activated, increases your physical damage done by 20% and makes you immune to Fear effects, but lowers your armor and resistances by 20%. Lasts 30sec. Cost 10 rage. Cooldown 3 min.” 1 Point. - Uber damage for a price.

Improved Intercept - “Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 or 10sec.” Max 2 Points. - Intercept has a 30 second cooldown, with this talent that is 20 seconds. Shines in PVP, where intercept is useful for the quick stun and getting back into melee range. Not that useful in PVE.

Improved Berserker Rage - “Berserker Rage ability will generate 5 or 10 rage when used.” Max 2 Points. - Rage comes quickly for a fury warrior this far into the tree, so this is a bit of a waste for a dual wielding warrior, but for a 2-handed fury warrior this is gold.

Flurry - “Increases your attack speed by 10, 15, 20, 25, 30% for 3 swings after dealing a critical strike.” Max 5 Points - With a high crit rate, a warrior will rip through targets. Great Talent.

Bloodthirst “Instantly attack the target causing damage equal to 45% of your attack power. In addition, the next 5 melee attacks will restore 10, 13, 17 or 20 health. This effect lasts 8 sec. Cost 30 rage. Cooldown 6sec. Range 5 yrds. 4 Ranks.” 1 Point - The reason why fury is better at leveling then arms. The 20 health per hit for 5 hits allows the fury warrior to stay in combat more continually then the arms warrior. It scales better then Mortal strike. Mortal Strike only gains .25 dps per 1 AP while Bloodthirst gains .45dps per 1 AP.

Protection Talents
Shield Specialization - “Increases your chance to block attacks with a shield by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5% and has a 20, 40, 60, 80, 100% chance to generate 1 rage when a block occurs.” Max 5 Points. - Not a bad talent. 5% more block and the 1 rage per block are handy, but to block you always have to have a shield equipped. If you don’t always sword and board, then Anticipation is better. Improve Shield block does work well also.

Anticipation - “Increases your defense skill by 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10.” Max 5 Points. - 10 defense, always. Nothing to complain about it. Though the defense skill is not as powerful as it used to be.

Improved Bloodrage - “Reduces the Health cost of your Bloodrage ability by 25 or 50%.” Max 2 points. - Now bloodrage uses base health. And a warrior base health at 60 is about 2600. This skill uses 20% to activate for about 520 health, these 2 points lower it to 260. Bloodrage though is rather situational. So these 2 points are only worth it if you want Last Stand.

Toughness - “Increases your armor value from item by 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10%.” Max 5 Points. - More Armor. One could say that this is a good thing, but damage mitigation per point goes down with each point more you get. So as you get more armor the less you get out of hit meaning the less this skill is important. Still if you need to put points into Protection at Tier 2, this is the place.

Iron Will - “Increase your chance to resist Stun and Charm effects by an additional 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15%.” Max 5 Points - Worthless. Really. 15% Stun and Charm resistance is almost nothing. And considering how often those attacks are used against you, makes 5 points here rather expensive use of 10% of your points.

Last Stand - “Ability: When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum hit points for 20 seconds. After the effects expire, the hit points are lost. Cooldown 10 min.” - Emergency Ability, about 2000 hitpoints in a flash, though once the ability runs out you lose 2000 hitpoints again as well. So either kill whatever you were having problems with during that time or get healed otherwise if you are below 2000 hit points you will end up with 1 hit point.

Improved Shield Block - “Allows your Shield Block ability to block an additional attack and increase the duration by 0.5, 1 or 2 sec.” Max 3 points - The first talent point is worth a lot since it increases shield block from 1 to 2 attacks. The other 2 points just increase duration. 1 point is useful, maxing this out is a waste.

Improved Revenge - “Gives your Revenge ability a 20, 30, 40% chance to stun the target for 3 sec.” Max 3 Points - Revenge doesn’t come up too often and you can only use it in defensive stance, so really only useful for a full protection spec warrior who is always in defensive stance. Still, most higher level mobs are immune to stun so this is a bit of a waste.

Defiance - “Increase the threat generated by your attacks by 3, 6, 9, 12, 15% while in Defensive Stance.” Max 5 Points. - The best talent in this tree. Defensive stance already confers a bonus of 30% on any ability and damage. This increases that to 45%. Comparatively, Battle stance doesn’t add a bonus and berserk stance has a negative threat bonus of 20%. Only important in PVE fights. More threat on the tank means that DPS classes can do more damage.

Improved Sunder Armor “Reduces the cost of your Sunder Armor ability by 1, 2, or 3 points.” - If you are tanking then usually you have more then enough damage rage coming in that you shouldn’t need this talent. A waste in my opinion.

Improved Disarm - “Increase the duration of your Disarm ability by 1, 2 or 3 sec.” Max 3 Points - Duration increase only, and not all enemies have a weapon and their unarmed damage is pretty good as well, and lets not get into immunity against disarm. An extra 3 seconds just means about 2 attacks anyways.

Improved Taunt - “Reduces the cooldown on your Taunt ability by 1 or 2 sec.” Max 2 Points. - Having to taunt all the time is a bad thing, once should have more then enough threat. Higher level bosses are immune as well. Again, it is not all that great of a talent.

Improved Shield Wall - “Increase the effect duration of your Shield Wall ability by 3 or 5 sec.” Max 2 points - Shield wall is a 30 minute Emergency talent. So it is very situational. Using 2 points on a very situational talent? Wasteful.

Improved Shield Bash - “Gives your Shield Bash ability a 50 or 100% chance to silence the target for 3 sec.” Max 2 Points. - Useful, though bosses will usually be immune. Helpful versus minor targets though.

Concussion Blow - “Ability: Stuns the target for 5 sec. Cost 15 rage. Range 5 yd. Cooldown 45 sec.” 1 Point - Better stun then Improved Revenge. Still, higher level mobs are immune or resistant and diminished returns do factor in.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization - “Increase the damage done by One-Handed melee weapons by 2, 4, 6, 8 , or 10%” Max 5 Points - More damage, that is always a good thing.

Shield Slam - “Ability: Slam the target with your shield causing 288 to 352, 342 to 418, 396 to 484, or 450 to 550 damage and has a 50% chance to dispel 1 magic effect on the target. Also causes a high amount of threat. Cost 30 rage. Cooldown 6 sec. Range 5 yd. 4 Ranks. ” 1 Point - Worst of the 31 talents, though best threat generation ability for the warrior. Still, the damage isn’t all the impressive, and as a protection warrior you would always have to use a shield.