Undead Warrior

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!

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2. Trolls: Warrior Race Analysis “Are Trolls The Best Warrior Race?” While I will always...
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Troll Warrior

“Are Trolls The Best Warrior Race?”

While I will always tell people asking me this to choose based on their own personal likes and dislikes, you may still be concerned about race choice, and want to know that the choice you make isn’t gimped…

Alternatively, you might be a powergamer that just wants to make the best choice you can.

Here’s the problem with defining “best” in WoW today:

There is no one “best” race that will outperform all the others in a certain class. That might have been true during the first few years of WoW, but today, things have changed.

So lets look at the Troll as a Warrior race:

1. Visually large & easy to spot
2. Berserk racial
3. Regeneration racial
4. Damage increase vs beasts racial
5. Increased crits with bows and throwing weapons racial
6. Reduced duration of movement impairing effects

These are the major points in my book.

Point 1 – Visual Character Size

You might be puzzled by number 1, which only applies in PvP, but being a larger race, with a huge set of mail or plate on DOES make you easier to see, and easier to target on the battlefield. A fairly small negative yes, but worthy of note.

• Negative for PvP Players

Point 2 – Beserk:

Increases attack speed by between 10% and 30% on activation, depending on how badly injured you are at time of casting. Keep this in mind – 30% haste can do some serious damage in a short amount of time!

As a warrior this is clearly a top ability. Bring it out in raids or dungeons when you’re below 40% health (you get the 30% haste at this point), and hope that your caster is on the ball. The 30% will stick with you even if you get back to 100% health. The same is true if you activate early – if you’re brought to 40% health your haste doesn’t increase…

• Great for dungeons and raids,
• So-so for leveling,
• So-so for PvP.

Point 3 – Regeneration

10% health regeneration bonus and a 10% health regeneration during combat is great in almost all situations, and can mean the different between life and death in close fought PvP fights, dungeons, or just grinding.

The best part about regeneration of course is for leveling. Trolls with regen will have a much greater up time due to the constant increase of health, and will spend less time eating to recover lost health.

In PvP its less effective due to the fast, burst damage nature of combat, but it can be nice to regenerate hitpoints between fights so you’re at 50% rather than 30% when the next begins.

• Great for dungeons and raids,
• Great for leveling,
• So-so for PvP.

Point 4 – Damage increase vs beasts

Damage dealt against beasts is increased by 5% with this ability.

Overall I’m not very excited about this racial… don’t get me wrong, 5% is nothing to sneeze at, and is great when you’re fighting beasts, but since you never know what you’ll be fighting day to day, it has limited usefulness.

One of those uses is the limited number of beast class bosses in the game. If you do find yourself fighting a beast class boss this can be a nice bonus to damage, but again its limited because you’ll go better with a fury or arms build as opposed to protection.

For leveling its not bad either because you’ll come across zones like the barrens that are just FULL of beasts, so it can speed you up here and there.

• So-so for leveling,
• So-so for raiding,
• Useless for PvP.

Point 5 – Increased crits with bows and throwing weapons

Another so-so Troll racial which doesn’t really cut it for warriors… Hunters, yes, its great… But as warriors you’ll generally only be used ranged weapons to pull, and even then, you may as well use your taunt ability which is ranged and performs the same task.

• Useless for leveling,
• Useless for raiding,
• Useless for PvP.

Point 6 – Reduced Duration of Movement Impairing Effects

This racial lets your Troll reduce the duration of movement impairing effects by 15%. On the surface this can seem handy, but even without the widely available trinkets which can free your character from stuns/dazes/slowing effects, 15% just isn’t a significant figure to merit any attention from players.

• Useless for leveling,
• Useless for raiding,
• Useless for PvP.

My Final Thoughts:

While there’s a lot of read up there, Trolls are a great choice for a Warrior class player! It doesn’t really matter which Horde race you choose, they’re all going to be effective provided you know how to play a Warrior talent build effectively.

However, for powergamers looking for fast leveling warrior (see also: Warrior leveling build), I believe the Troll should be your first choice. Regeneration is a small effect, but built up over 80 levels you’ll save many, many hours of game time.

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