User:Pyro789x/MS Warrior PvP Guide

Note: this guide is for MORTAL STRIKE PvP warriors, not fury or prot warriors.

When PvPing as a Mortal Strike warrior, the most important thing is to keep your cool. If you freak out, the only thing you're going to do is spam mortal strike and hamstring, maybe throw in a few whirlwinds, bloodrages, and berserker rages for more dps, but you're still going to lose.. unless you're fighting someone 20 levels under you, or if you majorly outgear them. Keep that in mind as you read through this guide.

Warrior
Warrior Vs. Warrior battles depend heavily on gear. Because of this, I recommend against fighting other warriors in regualar open world PvP, let the casters take care of the warriors, focus on a better fight.

When fighting a warrior, the warrior's spec is a very important thing to consider. If they are prot (or are holding a shield) I have to, again, suggest that you avoid them at all cost. They'll do shit-for-damage and you'll just be wasting your time trying to make a dent in their health bar.

Watch the warrior's hands, if they're not using a two handed weapon, attempt to disarm them. This will greatly decrease the amount of damage they are able to do for a period of time. If they are using a two handed weapon don't even bother, chances are they are immune to being disarmed, from talents.

If you do decide to fight a prot warrior, make sure you keep 5 sunders on them, do not allow those sunders to drop off. Also, a lot of your attacks are going to get blocked, and when the entire amount of damage of an attack is blocked, any effect it would have done does not get applied. This means that there's a very good chance that you're going to have a hell of a time getting your sunders and hamstrings applied. Because of this, unless the prot warrior is running away, don't even try to hamstring him until you have your sunders up, and to try and get your sunders up faster, go for an intercept stun and lay down a few un-blockable sunders while they are stunned. Also, if you really need to slow them, you may decide to go for piercing howl instead of hamstring. It doesn't last as long, but you won't be wasting as much time trying to hit them with an attack that they just keep blocking.

when fighting any warrior, make sure to keep a demo shout up. If you're fighting a fury or prot warrior, you will want to try to kite them around. Watch your auto attack timer mod, the moment you hit them with an auto attack, run out away from their melee range and into their deadzone (too close to use ranged attacks, too far to melee) until your auto attack timer mod tells you that your auto attack cooldown is almost up, then run in again for another auto attack. This is helpful because all of your attacks are still hitting, while you reduce the amount of damage they do to you. Good luck pulling it off though, any good warrior will piercing howl and hamstring you once you begin to try to pull this kind of thing on them.

Other than that.. good luck, hope for nice crits.

Farting around
When you're just wasting time and not doing anything, or waiting for something to happen, or actually.. hell.. Any time that you are not directly in combat with somebody, you should be in berserker stance. Why? Well, because you can break out of a good number of CCs with berserker rage. Also, you should be in berserker stance for 95% of all of your PvP battles, so why not stand around in berserker stance anyway? That way, if you get jumped and cant get a charge off, you dont have to worry about losing rage from switching stances.

Keybindings
Make sure that you bind all of your most important keys to keybindings, and not just any keybindings, but keybindings you can reach. See my keybindings for an example. When I first began PvPing, and for the first few months of my endgame PvP experience, I did not bind my stances to keybindings. I would simply point-and-click my stances with my mouse. The reason for this is because I didn't feel like putting my stances on my action bar. When I learned that you could 'special' action bar buttons (IE: paladin auras, druid forms, warrior stances, rogue stealth) directly to your keyboard, I bound my stances to numpad 1, numpad 2, and numpad 3. My performance improved dramatically, not just slightly. I was literally astounded at how well I did, a lot of the problems I had before were drastically reduced.

When I finally changed my keybindings again to shift 1, shift 2, and shift 3, my performance increased once again, dramatically. After that, I began to find different keybindings close to my left hand for my other abilities, and then began to bind keys to my mouse. Even though my keybindings got a bit more complicated, I found that the increased usability more then paid off the effort it took to remember exactly which one of my keys did what.

You'll notice that in WoW, as opposed to the way I move in first person shooters, I move with the keys QWES. The reason for this is that one day I noticed that my hands really began to cramp up as I tried to reach for certain keys, and also that most of the time while I was PvPing I learned to do all my looking around and fighting in PvP by holding down my right mouse button, and thusly when I moved around with A and D I was merely strafing. Because of this, I decided to simply bind A and D to different attacks, and stop using them altogether, that way I would just strafe all the time with Q and E. After doing this, I have not really had any issues with my hands cramping up, and I found it a lot easier to press my hotkeys. The only issue this caused was the pain and suffering for weeks trying to get used to it, but now that I'm used to it, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Macros
Continuing with my previous theme of increasing your PvP performance through enhancing your controls, I have to cover the importance of macros. If you are going to listen to nothing else I say, at least use this macro:


 * /stopcasting
 * /cast [stance:3] Battle Stance; Berserker Stance
 * /stopcasting

Why is this macro particularly important? Notice the "stopcasting" part in this macro. As I mentioned earlier (and if I didn't, blame the fact that this section here is actually the second thing that I wrote in this article, because it was a lot less boring than everything else) your stances are on their own 'global' cooldown, separate from the rest of your cooldowns. What does this mean? Well, normally when you use an ability you have to wait 1.5 seconds before you can use another ability. However, because stances are on their own global cooldown, you can use an ability and then change stances without waiting for your first global cooldown. What does this mean for you? Well, this means that you can charge an enemy in battle stance, use this macro, and then hit berserker rage (on its own cooldown, seperate from the three stances cooldown and the rest of your abilities cooldown), and if you do it fast enough then you will execute all three abilities at the same time, in the same order you hit them (assuming none of those abilities were already on a cooldown). What does this macro do? Well, if you are in berserker stance then this macro will put you in battle stance, but if you are in battle or defensive stance then this macro will put you in berserker stance. Bind this macro to somewhere very accessable and use it. often.

Because of the global cooldown discrepancy, you can make a macro which, on pressing it once, makes you charge an enemy, go to berserker stance, cast bloodrage, and use a trinket all at the press of one button, one time. I do not suggest making one of these however, as it often messes up if you are not in range to charge your enemy, or even if you are just barely in range to charge somebody.

There are a few other macros you should try messing around with, such as the following:


 * /stopcasting
 * /cast Shadowmeld
 * /stopattack
 * /stopcasting

-makes you stop doing what you are doing immediately, stop attacking, and shadowmeld. This is important for things like.. eating when you are corpse camped. If you add /stopcasting /use Conjured Muffin to the beginning of that macro, you can ressurect and press that macro, and you will instantly begin to eat and shadowmeld at the same time, so you don't have to wait for lag to allow you to cast shadowmeld. This is why stopcasting is important, it allows you to un-queue an ability, like eating, and allow you to cast something else at the same time.


 * /cast [nostance:3] Spell Reflection; [stance:3] Battle Stance
 * /equip NAME OF YOUR ONE HANDED WEAPON
 * /equip NAME OF YOUR SHIELD

-makes you go to battle stance if you are in berserker stance, and if you are in battle or defensive stance makes you cast spell reflection. This macro also makes you equip your sword and shield. because of this, spamming this macro should allow you to cast spell reflect no matter what stance you are in.


 * /cast [help, stance:2] Intervene; [stance:1] Charge; [stance:2] Disarm; Intercept

-casts disarm if you are in defensive stance and targeting an enemy, intervene if you are in defensive stance and targeting a friend, charge if you are in battle stance, and intercept if you are in berserker stance.


 * /stopcasting
 * /use [target=player] Heavy Netherweave Bandage

-makes you stop casting and bandage yourself immediately, without having to change your target (you dont have to target yourself)

Interface
Make sure your interface shows you everything you need, nothing more and nothing less. Personally, I used viewport to slightly decrease the size of my game screen, so I could put all my interface modules (including action bars and health bars) outside of the game screen. This allowed me to see everyone and everything around me without anything being covered up by interface. If you get nothing else, get an addon that allows you to see your health and rage bars easily, and an addon that makes it easy to see your enemy's cast bar. Also, get an addon that allows you to see your own auto attack timer, that will come in useful sooo many times. Put it somewhere on screen where you can see it easily.