World of Warcraft®

Introduction

WLS is a comp that anyone (with the proper mindset, positioning, and coordination) can master in order to attain at least 2200 rating before the season is over.

As a multiglad warrior with experience since season 3, this would be one of my first large contributions to the warrior community, and seeing as its pretty horrible outside and I have nothing better to do for the rest of the afternoon, I figured I may as well do something productive.

Before people flame for 'self advertising' note that the videos I have included are ONLY from our 31-6 W/L run to 2200. I will not include the higher rated fights that happened outside 2200 for the purpose of this post. Consider this a 'dummies' guide to WLS. If people want to see those fights, they are easy enough to find. Additionally, i've also included our losses during the climb, to showcase that it is totally possible to get globaled by low rated players if they sit on your shaman all day (yay cataclysm RNG).

I hope this is useful to some of you, and if there are any questions that I do not answer within my first initial posts, please feel free to post here and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

I'll be the first to admit that I am not a good teacher, hence the reason I have painstakingly separated the long video into individual fights, as a picture says a thousand words. Moving pictures.. well you get the point. Before watching the videos and learning about the comp, you must understand the how the synergy between WLS players (and their respective roles).

Basic playstyle, roles and strategy

Warrior is the shot caller and sets the pace of the match, but plays a secondary role within the comp (as shaman warlock combination is what makes this comp viable). Whatever target the warrior can hit without sacrificing positioning, he should be on it. Warrior burst is severely lacking this patch, so when the warrior connects, the target MUST take as much damage as possible to produce as much pressure as possible. Normally, the target the warrior is pressuring should die.

Warlock is the steady dps/controller of the comp. He dots up all the targets, hangs back (but will have to push up on occasion), and will wait for the warrior to call out who hes connecting with, and what's going on ahead of the play. The warlock should control the rest of the team accordingly. It is important for the warrior and the warlock to communicate, particularly when the warrior calls for any CC (when he feels he can score a kill) on either the healer, or the target that he is on (death coiling rogues to avoid disarms on big cooldowns, etc).

The shaman will sit in the back, dispel, heal, hex as necessary. Shocks should be used to stop crowd control (or to stop damage), so the warlock can use his counters on healers and damage. The warrior, should keep an eye out for any member of the team approaching the shaman. This is more about basic pvp situational awareness, but if a priest or shaman is running past you, in all likelihood they're going for a hex or fear on your healer. Call this out, let him prepare to tremor, or shock the hex.

Additionally, the synergy between warrior and healer is very important. As a warrior you cannot be a liability to your team, especially in our present state. You have to work hard to survive while being trained and being able to put out pressure simultaneously. Communicate about LOS, if you should wall or if you're OK, and let your team know what you're going to do ahead of time before you do it - but most importantly, cycle your defensives so your shaman won't have to use his - everything counts.

Another important thing to note is to switch frequently (when opportunity presents itself). As the warrior, you control the pace of the game. Switch to people that get feared out of position. Do not let the other team dictate where you stand, let them make mistakes, then capitalize on them.

Please note that the above will not 100% be the case. As WLS is a semi defensive comp (at least how we play it), you have the ability to change your strategy on the fly. Let them burn their cool downs, then finish them off. There is little margin for error playing with a warrior - WLS is 'battle of attrition' comp, and most of the time you will have to outplay your opponents in order to score a kill. Learn, adapt, emerge victorious.

Gearing

As a warrior, you want a healthy mix of resil/dps gear - the amount of resil you wear is determined by how comfortable you are getting trained. I would not recommend going under 4.2k or so.

All three targets in the comp are trainable, so be prepared for anything. I use the Gurthalak personally, but when trained I switch to my T2 PVP weapon to maximize damage/resilience while being sat on.

The following are snippets from the larger video, which show every team we fought from 0 rating, to 2200 (on our 31-6 win loss run). The reason I did this was because if any WLS team has trouble with a specific comp, you can browse this thread and see if there is anything we may be doing differently that may help.

I would like to add that I nubbed up the first few hunter games because of a broken intervene macro, which I remembered to fix halfway through the night, so pay no attention to that :)

Do note that the fights are IN ORDER. For instance, the first match is likely an 1800 team, where as the 34th is likely a 2300 one.

The first day complete video (3 hour duration) can be found at

http://www.twitch.tv/esotar1ous/b/307695803 (day 1)
http://www.twitch.tv/esotar1ous/b/30778759732 (day 2)

UPDATE - Instead of copying and pasting individual links, I've setup a playlist on youtube so you can select which fights to watch. Hope this makes life easier. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5C5E38DF8F92AD52

01) Priest Mage Rogue (PMR) - Win
02) DK Rogue Pally - Win
03) Warrior Mage Shaman - Win
04) Hunter Feral Shaman (Jungle Cleave) - Win
05) Warrior DK Paladin (TSG) - Loss
06) Warrior Mage Shaman - Win
07) Priest Mage Rogue (PMR) - Win
08) Priest Mage Rogue (PMR) - Win
09) Pally Hunter DK (PHD) - Loss
10) Ret DK Priest (Vanguards Cleave) - Win
11) Feral Lock Shaman - Win
12) Elesham Boomkin Pally (FABHTGTBC*) - Win
13) Elesham Boomkin Pally (FABHTGTBC*) - Win
14) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Loss
15) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Win
16) Pally Hunter DK (PHD) - Win
17) Warrior Mage Priest (WMP) - Win
18) Spriest Mage Pally (Shatterplay) - Win
19) Pally Hunter DK (PHD) - Win
20) Ret DK Priest (Vanguards Cleave) - Win
21) Priest Mage Rogue (PMR) - Win (D/C)
22) Feral Spriest Shaman - Win
23) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Loss
24) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Win
25) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Win
26) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Win
27) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Win
28) Hunter Feral Paladin (Jungle Cleave) - Win
29) Hunter Boomkin Paladin - Win
30) Ret Hunter Feral (Triple DPS) - Loss
31) Ret Hunter Feral (Triple DPS) - Loss
32) Mage Lock Shaman (MLS) - Win
33) Mage Lock Shaman (MLS) - Win
34) Rogue Lock Shaman (RLS) - Win
35) Rogue Lock Shaman (RLS) - Win
36) Rogue Lock Shaman (RLS) - Win
37) Rogue Lock Shaman (RLS) - Win

There will be a sister guide released to this guide soon by Styg (the warlock I play with), so stay tuned for that. No word on a shaman tutorial, but maybe in the future.

Armories

W- http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Eso/simple
L- http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Stygzilla/simple
S- http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Bks/simple

I'm not sure what else I can add really.

Warriors are hurting, but its not impossible to outplay your opponents. Go out there, get your feet wet, and win some matches. Use this guide as necessary.

If you find this information useful, subscribe. Its more fun doing it live. ;)

Hope I've helped <3.

Won against rls how? Also sad.. I do better playing wls than rls lol

Very good guide, its definitely good to see someone make a guide like this

Does no one arena anymore :(

it seems like all the teams u lost to (3-4) all have feral druids

do ferals counter warriors? can u comment on why u lost those games?

i'm having the same problem, ppl get bursted to death and/or our healer is cycloned.

The losses to triple DPS are self explanatory. :P Trip deeps scum.

The other losses to feral hunter teams are because they essentially just train the warlock/shaman to the ground with so much instant CC on the healer - and the fact that my intervene macro was broken for the first few hunter fights. Once I fixed it though, the rest of the hunter fights were easy.

We should've won all of them, it was really just my fault that I couldn't stop traps.

Me gusta

The only advice I can give (More of an idea since I have no experience in WLS) is to run the spec i'm running where you get Imp Slam and Incite to be able to provide the most amount of dmg output by you as possible. Although Slam is situational as in I mostly use it to finish off a target and to spam it a lot when deadly calm is up.

Thanks for the great guide. Only thing up to date so I will request sticky :)

I went with drums of war instead of slam because of drive by pummels. Slam is arguably the better spec, but due to latency issues, and that I'm never on a target long enough (imo) to utilize slam properly, I decided to spec out of it. Obviously it's playstyle preference, but I prefer free pummels and demo shout.

Loved it, do you have any advice on finding good teammates to play with?

It's easy honestly if you have the credentials - but if not I'd suggest moving onto one of the bigger pvp servers (Kel'thuzad) and finding teammates there.

Great guide Eso, hope to see you soon :D

Yeah credentials is what I am missing

I notice a few times throughout your videos you are using Colossus Smash on clothies, is this something that is advantageously worth the GCD?

It's a damage increase either way you spin it. Depending on the situation, you may have to sacrifice it for a hamstring, or to put MS up, etc - but you should be using it whenever you can.