[0:01]Welcome to the 1-60 Warrior leveling guide. In this video, I'll explain the playstyle I used in my hardcore Warrior speedrun, where I hit level 60 in three days, eight hours, and 43 minutes, playing solo self-found and using a limited amount of rested XP. A lot of people still seem to think that Warriors are the slowest or the worst leveling class, which I don't think is true. If a Warrior is played the right way, I don't think it's going to be more than 10% behind in leveling speed compared to something like a Warlock or a Rogue, which most people consider among the best leveling classes. And today, I'll tell you what I think is the right way to play a Warrior. You can use this guide whether you play Horde or Alliance, and whether you play hardcore or not. The video is divided into timestamp chapters, so you can skip to the sections you want to watch. Before I go into the specifics on how to play at different level ranges, I'll explain the three most important rules when leveling a Warrior. These rules apply no matter your level. The first rule is to use Demo Shout on every mob that isn't a caster. Demo Shout is one of the most underrated abilities in the game. It goes unmentioned in many leveling guides, and some guides even suggest to not train it past Rank 1 to save money. I think this is because the tooltip isn't very clear, so let me translate it. The exact numbers depend on the mob you use it on and the rank of Demo Shout you have. But most of the time, Demo Shout will reduce the melee damage of a mob by roughly 15 to 25%. If you have improved Demo Shout, which you should a lot of the time, it will reduce damage by roughly 20 to 35%. If these numbers were in the tooltip, I think it would be much more clear to people how broken this ability is. And you might say, well, it costs 10 Rage, so the mob will die slower. And that's not wrong, but the amount of time you save getting your health back outside of combat far outweighs any time you would save by spending an extra 10 Rage on damage. If you've ever asked yourself why do Warriors get so low fighting just a single mob, and why is pulling two mobs usually a disaster that you run away from with a blinking health bar? I think the answer is because Warriors were designed with Demo Shout in mind, but this ability has just been cursed with a confusing tooltip, so for 20 years, no one thought it would be a good idea to use it in every fight while leveling. As I said, you obviously shouldn't use Demo Shout on a mob that spends most of the fight casting Fireball, or on a lower-level mob that you kill in a few seconds. But that aside, first global, Demo Shout every time. The second rule is two sides of the same thing. Kill mobs while moving, and move while killing mobs. First, it means that whenever you are moving from place to place, you should be killing mobs, even if they're not part of any quest you're doing. Anytime you're just running instead of auto-attacking something while running, you're slowing down your leveling. Second, it means that whenever you are killing mobs, you should be moving towards the next mob or objective. You should always aim to be in charge range of the next mob when your target dies, or close to the quest item you're going to pick up, or the NPC you're going to talk to.
[3:40]You get the idea. You're a Warrior, you're a melee class, you don't lose any damage from moving, so take advantage of that.
[3:49]The third rule is to get ahead before you fall behind, which means that if you ever end up in a spot where you're mainly questing on mobs at or above your level, you've already fallen behind, and it would have been better to take care of the problem and get some extra XP before it started slowing you down. You've probably heard before that the sweet spot for Warriors is to kill mobs one to three levels below you, and that is absolutely true. Not only is it safer and more comfortable, it's also quite a bit faster. So your goal is to maintain a level lead on whatever mobs you're questing on. This doesn't mean it's a problem if you're once in a while doing a quest with mobs above your level, but if you're not spending most of your time against mobs in the sweet spot, one to three levels below you, then you've fallen behind, and as a Warrior, it's always better to stay ahead in level than to fall behind and catch up afterwards. You can think of falling behind on XP like taking out a loan. Eventually, you have to pay it back. If you play a Hunter, there's not a lot of cost to taking out a loan like this, because you can still kill overleveled mobs pretty easily. But as a Warrior, you're paying a massive interest rate on that loan, because you're just going to be very slow until you've paid it back. To get ahead on XP, you can either do Dungeons, grind, or log out and wait to get more rested XP. I have a section on grind spots later in the video. Usually, grinding isn't that great, but there are a few spots in the game, which are close to, and sometimes even as good as questing. More on that later. Now I'll explain the playstyle, talents, and gear choices for Level 1 to 30. We'll start with weapons, which I've divided into sections for Level 1 to 20, and Level 20 to 30. From Level 1 to 20, I recommend using a one-hand weapon with a shield. Two-hand weapons can also work well, especially if you can get a good one from the Auction House. But I would personally always go with one-hand and shield for these early levels. Your weapon should be as fast as possible, which means daggers are often the best choice. You should also use sharpening stones all the time, since they add a lot of free damage. Rough sharpening stones can be made with one Blacksmithing skill, and the rough stones you need to make them can be gathered with one Mining skill. So you can get these without even spending any time leveling professions.
[6:27]If you use the Auction House, definitely buy some coarse and heavy sharpening stones. As you can see, a heavy sharpening stone on a fast dagger is equivalent to roughly 43 Attack Power, more than some raid consumables you'd use at level 60. At these early levels, the weapons you can buy from vendors will almost always be better than quest rewards. Here are the weapons I recommend buying when you make your first visit to the town in your starting zone, like Goldshire or Brill. Later on, maybe around the time you make your first visit to a capital city, you can get another weapon upgrade. Ideally, the dagger called Jambiya, but if your race can't use daggers, or you're not able to train daggers yet, you can get a mace, cutlass, or hatchet. All of these three alternatives are basically equal once you apply a sharpening stone. The green dagger you get from the Defensive Stance class quest can also be a substitute for one of the weapon upgrades I just mentioned. But once you hit 14, you should always train daggers and get a poniard, which is one of the fastest weapons in the game. Alliance Warriors can train daggers in every capital city, and Horde Warriors can train it in Ogrimmar and Undercity. At Level 19, you can upgrade to a Kris. I also buy my shields from vendors. With the limited money I have playing self-found, I'm able to afford shield upgrades at Level 9 and 18.
[7:59]But there are a lot more options than I'm showing here. Just like the early vendor weapons, these shields are very strong for their level. On the surface, it's logical to think that playing one-hand and shield would be like a Druid questing in bear form instead of cat form. And that's also true at higher levels, but a Level 15 Warrior and a Level 45 Warrior might as well be two different classes. If you look at the spells Warriors have that benefit from using a slow two-handed weapon, you only have one of them, Overpower, before Level 20. I know Slam isn't in this picture, but you don't really use it while leveling. On the other hand, your main damage spell early on, Heroic Strike, is far stronger with a fast dagger than with a slow two-hander. If you look at the raw DPS of the weapons, it often looks like there's a very big difference between a two-hander and a one-hander. But the Attack Power and damage you get from your base stats and armor, Battle Shout, and sharpening stones makes the difference a lot smaller than it looks. A fast dagger gains the same DPS from these bonuses as a slow two-hander. So by using a fast one-handed weapon, you may lose a small amount of DPS, at least on paper. In return, you get three main benefits. One, your armor goes through the roof, reducing your downtime by a lot. As an example, when I buy a Level 9 white shield from a vendor and equip it at Level 10, I have 35% physical damage reduction. And this is with my other armor just being grey items that drop in the starting zone. That is almost the same amount of damage reduction my Warrior has at Level 59 wearing full plate. Two, you have access to Shield Bash. I think many Warriors just take it for granted that if you fight a mob with Fireball or another high damage spell at low level, you're going to end the fight at 10% HP. Having Shield Bash makes fights against casters completely trivial. Three, you have very steady and predictable damage output, which makes you less vulnerable to bad streaks of misses and parries. If you have a slow weapon that attacks every three and a half seconds, three failed attacks in a row usually means you have to either use a potion or run away and reset the fight. And at the other end of the spectrum, some of the extra DPS you might have from a two-hander will in some cases be wasted if you get a few crits in a row and kill a mob very quickly, and you end up just standing there waiting for your charge to come back up anyway. A fast weapon smooths things out and makes your damage more dependable.
[10:49]From Level 20 to 30, you can play either Dual Wield or two-hand. What's best depends on what weapons you have access to, so go with your strongest weapon, regardless of type. Dual Wield has a really big power spike in the mid-20s when you get Improved Execute and a new rank of Heroic Strike. But it's not as strong right after 20 or right before 30. You can make Dual Wield better by heroic strike canceling, which is where you queue up heroic strike, and then cancel it before your main hand hits, so you don't actually use the heroic strike and don't spend any Rage. Any off-hand attacks made while Heroic Strike is queued don't suffer the penalty to your hit chance that you normally get when Dual Wielding. I'll post a macro for Heroic Strike canceling in the description. To be completely honest, I didn't bother that much with it while leveling my Warrior, but it will increase your DPS. If you play two-hand, the speed of the weapon is not important at this level. The DPS is what matters. The weapon type also doesn't matter. Sometimes a staff can be better than a sword or an axe. There are a ton of options for weapons in this level range. Here are a few different options from vendors, in case you play solo self-found and are not getting weapons from Dungeons or the Auction House. A weapon I especially want to highlight here is Caelus Axe, a Level 24 green you can buy from a vendor, and which is basically equivalent to a cruel barb. Getting a weapon like this really amplifies the mid-20s power spike for Dual Wield.
[12:29]Up to Level 30, I would always recommend playing Fury, no matter if you go with one-handed or two-handed weapon. Apart from Cruelty, which is obviously great for the 5% crit, the main benefits are Improved Demo Shout and Improved Execute. Arms does have some decent talents, but some of them, especially Tactical Mastery, just aren't very useful for leveling pre-30. And in any case, they can't really match up to how strong the early Fury talents are. Piercing Howl in itself is not an argument for playing Fury, but it's a nice utility spell to have. For example, if a mob is fleeing at low health and it ran out of your range, you can use Piercing Howl to catch it again, even though you don't have Intercept yet. And if you're playing hardcore, Piercing Howl can save your life. But the key talents are Cruelty, Imp Demo Shout, and Imp Execute. These make Fury the best choice early on.
[13:30]From Level 1 to 30, you rarely have a lot of different items to choose from in each slot. But if you can choose, Spirit is your best stat for leveling speed. It's the same reason you use Demo Shout. The reduced downtime far outweighs any reduction in kill speed, and there's a reason this is true for Warriors in particular. Getting 10 Strength would make you kill mobs slightly faster, but percentage-wise, it would be a fairly small damage increase, even at lower levels. On the other hand, getting 10 Spirit is a big increase to your health regen early on. And the reason is that the scaling that Warriors get to their health regen from Spirit, compared to other classes, is absurdly high. So you just get more health back for each point of Spirit, and no other class even comes close. Choosing between Stamina and Strength is mostly a personal preference at these low levels. But I find that getting at least some Stamina allows you to play a bit more aggressive and not have to always reset a fight if you pull an extra mob, especially when using Demo Shout. But usually, you just take whatever green items you can get at these early levels.
[14:45]From 1 to 30, your skill priority depends on your weapon choice. Early on, one-hand prios Rend over Heroic Strike. You will stop using Rend after switching to Dual Wield at Level 20, and just spend all Rage on Heroic Strike. In fact, I don't even train the new rank of Rend at Level 20. When Dual Wielding, you execute pretty much every mob once you've trained it at Level 24. Before Level 22, two-hand also has Rend as first priority. If you play two-hand during the early levels, mobs usually die in a set number of hits, for example, four or five melee hits. And in some fights, that number won't change regardless of whether you spend your excess Rage on Heroic Strike or Sunder. Heroic Strike probably wins out more often when you get a new rank of it at Level 16, but as I said, sometimes the mob will die in the same number of swings, regardless of what buttons you press. After Level 22, two-hand should just prioritize Sunder until the mob is around 50%, then finish with Heroic Strike and Execute. If you have a lot of Rage, it can sometimes be good to not Execute and instead pull Rage for faster Sundering on the next mob.
[16:07]Now I'll explain the playstyle, talents, and gear choices for Level 30 to 50. We'll start with talents this time. At Level 30, you spec Arms to get Sweeping Strikes, and the next 20 levels are all about how well you can use this ability. Taking advantage of Sweeping Strikes requires a good two-handed weapon, so if you don't have one ready when you hit Level 30, try to get one as soon as possible. I switch at Level 32 when playing solo self-found, since that's when you can buy a really strong staff from a vendor. When not using an axe, I start out with this spec. You can pause the video if you want to take a closer look. Then I respect to this around the time I get Whirlwind Axe. You may wonder why I take Impale, since it only increases the damage of yellow attacks that crit, and it doesn't benefit your auto attacks at all. That's because when playing axe spec, your talents alone will eventually bring you up to 15% crit without any extra crit from gear or buffs. And a very large part of your damage will come from Whirlwind, Mortal Strike, Overpower, Execute, and Cleave, all of which benefit from Impale. Overpower especially, since it gets an extra 50% crit chance.
[17:29]From 30 to 50, you should only ever play two-hand, never Dual Wield. If you remember this chart from earlier, it starts to look a lot better now. And just to get the reasoning straight, you don't get Sweeping Strikes because you have a two-hand weapon. You use a two-hand weapon to take advantage of Sweeping Strikes.
[18:04]Obviously, Corpsmaker is the dream, but when playing solo self-found, I just used this staff from a vendor until I get Whirlwind Axe, and leveling with that staff is still very fast. Then get Whirlwind Axe, Bonebiter if you play Alliance and do Scarlet Monastery anyway, but there's not a big difference. If you're rich, you can buy Executioner's Cleaver or Kang, but in my speedrun, I actually used Whirlwind Axe all the way from Level 39 to 52. I'm not saying you shouldn't upgrade your weapon, but if you switch to, for example, a sword or a mace, you lose a lot of time releveling your weapon skills. And axe spec is what gives you the most value on Impale and Sweeping Strikes during this level range anyway. The point is, you can level super fast even if you stick with Whirlwind Axe or Bonebiter for a long time.
[19:00]Your rotation from 30 to 50 is all about a good setup for Sweeping Strikes. During this level range, I think something like 96 or 97% of my fights were double pulls with Sweeping Strikes. I would only do single pulls if there were no other mobs around, or if it was a higher-level mob, or some really annoying caster mob that would be impractical to set up for sweeping. In order to successfully and safely use Sweeping Strikes for every pull, you need to do three things. First, obey Rule Number 1, use Demo Shout. Second, get as much health as possible. Stamina is your best DPS stat in this level range. And third, pull the first mob, pull Rage on it, and then pull the second mob and pop Sweeping. I know a lot of people who got boosted to Whirlwind Axe at Level 30, and if you have Whirlwind Axe at 30, you can just walk up to two mobs and Cleave them both down from full health. But that stops working at some point as you level up, and then people are stuck with this bad habit and conclude that Sweeping doesn't work anymore, and that they have to single target now, and then they end up leveling slower than a Ret Paladin. So now I'll explain how to do this step-by-step. Charge a mob, Demo Shout it, pop Berserker Rage, and go back to Battle Stance. Hit the mob until its health is at a point where a full Sweeping will either kill it or leave it very low. Move close to the second mob while doing this. The exact percentage depends on a lot of factors, especially your weapon, but for me it was usually 50 to 60% of the first mob's health. Then pull the second mob, Demo Shout again, and pop Sweeping. This is the basic setup, and your exact rotation after that depends on your level. Before Level 36, you just spam Cleave and then Execute once the first mob gets low. After 36, you prioritize Whirlwind over Cleave, and after 40, you prioritize Whirlwind over Mortal Strike. Still Execute when mobs get low. After Level 46, where you get a new rank of Sunder and mobs get more and more health, it's sometimes worth using a few Sunders during the setup on the first mob. A few things to be aware of. Most of the time, it's possible to include caster mobs when sweeping. Try to arrange it so the first mob is a melee, and have the caster as the second mob. This makes the setup easier. You can also try to use line of sight to bring a caster mob near another one for sweeping. Be aware that Pummel and Hamstring will waste charges on Sweeping Strikes. Try very hard not to use them with Sweeping up. And finally, I said before to use Demo Shout twice during the setup. It depends. Sometimes I only use it on the first mob, sometimes only after I've pulled the second mob, and sometimes I use it twice in a single pull. You will quickly get a feel for what makes sense in each fight.
[22:14]From 30 to 50, your speed depends entirely on making good use of Sweeping Strikes. And this requires a good health pool. For this reason, Stamina becomes your best leveling stat. Spirit is still very strong and remains your second best stat until Level 45, at which point the upgraded food reduces the relative value of Spirit, and Strength becomes better.
[22:42]Now I'll explain the playstyle, talents, and gear choices for Level 50 to 60. I say Level 50, but what this actually means is whenever you spec back to Fury. And the right time to respect is not always Level 50. In my speedrun, I go Fury at Level 52. It depends, but more about that later. In a standard Fury leveling build, you have a few points to play around with, and I choose to put these points into Improved Berserker Rage and Improved Overpower. When I show the rotation, I'll give a more in-depth explanation of why these two talents are so important, but they are really crucial to this playstyle, and this is also part of the reason why you don't always want to respect immediately when you hit 50. There are three factors that determine when to respect. First, the weapons you're going to use as Fury are the most important. I'll go over some of the different weapon options later, but if you have, let's say, a Thrash Blade, it might be worth respecting already at Level 50 or 51. Second, Arms and Sweeping Strikes start to fall off a bit in the late 40s, and this trend continues in the 50s, as the health pools of mobs increase even more. Even if you have a good weapon at Level 50, the five charges of Sweeping Strikes just won't make the same dent in a mob's health bar as they did at Level 40. But if you have a really good two-hand weapon, that could be an argument for delaying the respect a little bit. And third, the talents I just mentioned, which come fully online around Level 54 and 55. This is the latest, I think, you should respect.
[24:26]With a switch back to Fury, you will go back to purely single targeting. Your opener is Charge, Demo Shout, Berserker Rage, back to Battle Stance, and then spam Sunder until the mob hits 50%. After that, you use Bloodthirst until the mob gets into Execute range. You spend pretty much all of your time in Battle Stance, and you should only be in Berserker Stance briefly whenever you need to use Berserker Rage, Pummel, or Intercept. Whirlwind is rarely worth the Rage in this spec. One of the things that happen when you spam Sunder is that you get quite a few Overpower procs, and when you have Improved Overpower, they very often trigger Flurry. In the spec I showed before, I suggested taking Improved Berserker Rage before Improved Overpower. I'll be completely honest and say I'm not entirely sure which one is best to take first. Maybe it actually is better to take Improved Overpower first. Flurry procs are obviously great, and even with a one-hander, Overpower crits deal a lot of damage, especially if you have a slow main hand. The reason I chose to go with Improved Berserker Rage first is that it helps you get your Sunder stack going faster, even if you miss a few attacks at the start. So it adds some stability to your kill speed, but as I said, it's very possible that taking Improved Overpower first is better.
[25:53]For weapons in this level range, I'll focus on quest rewards, since they're more dependable than random Dungeon drops, or then BOEs, which might be too expensive, or might not even be up on the Auction House. First, we have a number of green quest rewards that are available to both factions. All from quests that can be soloed.
[26:14]There are a number of blues you can get from Dungeon quests, with Thrash Blade being by far the best option. Sword of Omen is the reward from a Horde quest in Scarlet Monastery. Alliance has a similar reward from their version of the quest, although it's the same quest that rewards Bonebiter. And finally, some faction-specific quest rewards, where Horde has some great options. Belgrom's Hammer especially is an amazing weapon. I get it at Level 54 in my speedrun, and it's such a huge power spike. Alliance only get one weapon that's exclusive to them, and unfortunately, it's not really realistic to solo before it's outdated anyway. When choosing your weapons, try to get a fast off-hand for more Overpower procs and a slow main hand for harder hitting Overpowers. But the most important part is the DPS, especially for the main hand, so speed is not the most important factor.
[27:14]Without Sweeping Strikes, Stamina becomes much less important. This makes Strength your best stat during this level range. Whether you prioritize Stamina or Spirit after that is personal preference. I like Stamina more, but maybe that's because I play hardcore. I didn't mention Agility earlier, and there's not much to say about it. Pretty much this: it gets better with Deep Wounds and Impale, and later on with Flurry. So yeah, Agility is okay, not great.
[27:48]And that concludes the playstyle guides for the different level ranges. Now, I'll go over a few miscellaneous topics and give some general tips on how to improve your leveling.
[28:03]Some people have a perception that getting a mount at Level 40 is very important to your leveling speed. This is not true, especially for a melee class like a Warrior. In my Warrior speedrun, I couldn't afford a mount until Level 46. Still, there are some abilities whose training costs do not justify the benefit they give in combat. Here are the abilities I don't train before I have my mount. Shield Bash, Thunder Clap, and Intercept past Rank 1. Rend, Cleave, and Overpower past Rank 2, and Heroic Strike past Rank 4. I don't train Revenge, Shield Block, Challenging Shout, or Mocking Blow at all when solo leveling, and I always skip Slam. To explain the value of a mount, it obviously does make you level faster, for example, when you have to run around in a city or on a road with no mobs. But often, you will level faster by moving on foot while killing mobs. Here's me questing in Tanaris, and this guy comes up and says, do you guys not have mounts? And I actually do have one at this stage, but most of the time, it's better to move at running speed while gaining experience, instead of moving at mount speed while not gaining any experience at all.
[29:30]Maybe you're thinking, this guy is such a shill for Demo Shout, he probably loves Thunderclap too. And I don't, since it costs twice the Rage, it doesn't reduce damage by nearly as much, and it has a much shorter duration until you get closer to max rank. Having Rank 1 is useful when fighting mobs that spawn small ads with 1 HP, and I do train the higher ranks of Thunderclap after I get my mount. Then I typically use it if a quest requires me to fight multiple mobs at once, since these higher ranks actually deal decent damage, and the debuff also has a longer duration at this point.
[30:13]If you're traveling through an area where the mobs are too low-level to be worth killing, you can use Charge on mobs and critters to travel faster, which most people know. You should also know that charging a neutral mob will not cause it to attack you as long as you press Escape to cancel your auto-attack before the Charge ends. Charge is a great ability, but it's also likely to get you killed if you don't think about when to use it. There will be cases where you should resist the urge to charge in, and just pull the mob from range instead. It feels slower than charging, but it's faster than having to run away and reset the fight against the four mobs you just pulled with Charge. And if you're playing hardcore, it's definitely faster than being sent back to Brill.
[34:53]Warriors can, contrary to popular belief, solo a lot of elite quests. Here are the most important things when soloing group content. Pull Rage before the fight. Use Demo Shout. Use Fear to secure a full bandage. Use Hamstring to kite the elite and DPS it with thrown weapons. Use Retaliation if necessary. If you're playing Dual Wield, put on a shield. If you're playing two-hand, Hamstring kite the mob in between your melee swings, especially if it has a fast attack speed, like King Bangalash here. And finally, you can use Intercept into Hamstring as a method to kite very hard-hitting elites. For example, if you're kiting it to a city in order to get help from the guards.
[35:48]In order to complete my Warrior speedrun, I made a custom leveling guide that can be used with the rested XP add-on. I've made this leveling guide available for free in my Discord to anyone that subscribed to me on YouTube.
[36:33]My three-day, eight-hour, 43-minute run was good, but far from perfect. A lot of things went wrong, and I've also made a lot of improvements to the guide since finishing my run. For anyone that's interested in getting into speedrunning, I'm always willing to help. Whether it's game related tips, how to follow the speedrun rule set, how to code your own speedrun guide, or how to easily record and upload your runs. I love speedrunning in Classic WoW and would love to see more people join this community and raise the level of competition. I hope to see you, either in my Discord or even better, on the leaderboards someday.
