Undead Race Selection: Warriors

Are Undead one of the best class choices for warriors?

You certainly don’t see as many of them as you do Tauren and Orcs (or maybe they’re just less physically imposing…).

So are they an effective choice for Horde players wanting to roll a warrior?

Will choosing undead gimp you? Or will it only be good for certain talent specs?

Lets dive in and answer those questions and more.

First, lets look at all the basic factors:

1. Visually average sized and harder to spot amongst other large horde races.

2. Will of the Forsaken. Removes any fear/charm/sleep effect. 2 minute cooldown. (NB: rumored to be getting a nerf in the upcoming 3.3 patch!)

3. Cannibalize. Regains 7% total health every 2 seconds you feast on a humanoid or undead corpse, for 10 seconds (so that’s 70% health returned in 10 secs)

4. Underwater breathing. Lets you breath for 233% longer underwater.

Lets start by looking at point 1 – avatar size. For warriors, I personally think for PvP in battlegrounds this can be a factor.

If you’re a massive tauren in full plate, or a large orc in plate, you stick out like a big, bright red thumb. Undead on the other hand, while they still wear bulky plate, aren’t nearly as obvious, and won’t draw as much spell power or melee as Orcs or Tauren do. So thats one plus.

In PvE, its obviously a non issue.

Next, lets look at what is widely regarded as one of the top racial abilities in World of Warcraft — Will of the Forsaken (or WotF for short). This racial is great for both Pve and PvP play, and its the reason why you see more undead in arena than any other race for horde players.

WoTF means you basically have a second “get out of jail free card”. If you’re feared, slept, or charmed, you can use WoTF to break out of it, and still have your pvp trinket ready for any other stuns/fears/cc moves.

This in my opinion is more important in arena play and to a lesser extent battlegrounds than PvE, but plenty of dungeons have encounters with fearing mobs.

WoTF in its current form gets the biggest thumbs up from Arms and Fury warriors.

Why? Because protection warriors get intercept, which helps them break out of snares and roots, which effectively gives them a different kind of movement breaking ability.

Fury and Arms also rely on dealing lots of damage fast, so they want to be sure they can always be running at the enemy full speed ahead, rather than being feared/slept/stunned, etc.

So for all warriors, WoTF is excellent. Protection undead warriors have a veritable stable of crowd control breaking abilities, and if you like the prot spec, I highly recommend stacking WoTF with intercept & a PvP trinket.

In the future though? Check out the 3.3 patch notes – WoTF is soon to be sharing a cooldown with “similar effects”, which means you likely won’t be able to use WoTF, then your PvP trinket, because they share the same cooldown. There’s already hysteria on the net from Undead loving fan boi’s, but I’d expect these changes to go through given Blizzards ongoing “homogenization” of racials.

Cannibalize: Not a bad ability, in fact great for raiding when you want to conserve mana or while the “recently bandaged” debuff is in effect.

Cannibalize is also awesome for leveling up as a warrior or rogue who don’t have any self healing spells or abilities.

You’ll also enjoy using cannibalize in PvP to rub it in the face of any alliance you just killed. Hot button it so they can see you start to eat them before they release…! (be careful of shaman’s though…)

So another big tick on this racial for undead warriors – because you have no self healing ability, its great for leveling, dungeons and raids, and pvp when you want some quick health after a kill and don’t want to waste bandages.

Lastly we’ve got the underwater breathing skill, which doesn’t really leave much to say. Its a handy ability that you’ll be thankful for in a few quests, but really, nothing we’re that thankful for.

So should you choose an Undead warrior? Or should you choose Tauren or Orc instead?

Firstly choose who you like the look of – because you’re gonna be spending a LONG time with this toon. If you’re still on the fence, check my other articles on Trolls as a Warrior Race, and Tauren, the Best Warrior Race?

Have fun, and let us know how you go with your new Undead warrior!