Looking for some Warrior advice

I’m looking for a little advice from you fine folk who know and love the Warrior souls.

I got myself into a bit of a spring/summer challenge. I love and always play the healers and mages – ranged characters. A friend loves and always plays the warriors and melee healers – the in your face characters. We’ve challenged each other to level a character on the “other side”. Eeps!

I’d like some advice on a good solo leveling setup. I don’t mind using pets and if a little ranged goodness can be slipped in I would be thrilled, but it isn’t required. *hums innocently* I have no (read none, zip, ziltch, zero, nadda) intention of taking this gal into dungeons or doing pvp, just quest and hit rifts to level as far as I can get by our deadline. My hands aren’t as nimble as they used to be and macros still baffle me (this old gal can be taught, it just takes a while sometimes *laughs*) so something a bit easier on the fingers would be very much appreciated.

So, any suggestions? I have a half dozen frozen cheesecake waffle cones on the line here, guys! :)

Beastmaster is a pretty good soul for soloing up until you get to around level 30 or so. If you are allowed to do so, you might be more comfortable with a reaver build since it has a large amount of ranged AE and self healing available to it. I'd say for leveling a tank quickly on quests and rifts you could go reaver/riftblade and put 0 in Beastmaster for the pet (it will continue to level with you up until 28 or so with no points in it). The pet isn't going to do much, but it does hit and cause damage and with no points you aren't losing anything when the pet dies. You could also go reaver/BM but there's not anywhere near as much synergy between those two in my opinion.

The best solo leveling spec I have found is Champion/Paragon. They just kill so fast to the point killing 2-3 mobs in a row is just no problem. The only difficult part about this build is all the reaction abilities that pop up are kinda REQUIRED to keep your DPS to impressive numbers. The best Tank spec I've found is Reaver/Paladin. The Reaver's Dots and abilities to make the Dots AoE and increase threat make them incredibly good at getting agro and keeping it against multiple mobs even from a distance. I hate using pets cause they tend to get me killed more often then help. Unfortunately I abandoned my Warrior at lvl 35 for now. It just doesn't feel like a tank. Most solo PVE in this game groups mobs in pairs, so your almost always in danger of death. And Based on survivability and DPS to Hitpoints, my Fully decked out high armor warrior dies just as fast as my not so fully armored mage. And I just find that frustrating and pointless.

The warrior calling is pretty flexible in terms of leveling. You will have quite a bit more downtime than a mage or a cleric, even rogues seem to keep themselves going quite easily. Ive tried Reaver/Paladin Reaver/Riftblade Champ/Paragon BM/Champ Riftblade/Paladin Voidknight < lets not talk about that :P I can atleast give you some advice on souls Warlord - high mitigation buff tank class, not efficient for leveling Paladin - high mitigation block tank. Great for off soul due to Aggressive Block and the Full heal. Don't bother going past Unyielding Defense. The self heal talents currently have internal cooldowns and thus are useless against groups of mobs. Reaver - AOE dot tank. Another solid tanking off soul. Gives you some moderate AOE damage and has the only real self heals of any of the warrior souls. The healing is still below average when compared to any other calling. Voidknight - Magic mitigation tank soul. Not that amazing for leveling, some points in it are nice especially for Ravenous Strength. Champion - High dps 'glass cannon' soul great for PVP and single target leveling. Pulling too many mobs will kill you quick but :P Beastmaster - High single target bleed/dot DPS with a pet. Good for leveling and has moderate self heals that can keep you going in between mobs. Like champion doesn't stand well against more than 2 mobs Paragon - Dual Wielding soul. DW is just not worth it (offhanders not even counting in most abilities in the tree) and many Paragon skills work with two handers. Strike Like Iron is good for leveling as a 48% increase in damage helps quite a bit :). Only problem is do you use 3 AP for it, or actually do damage with a finisher. I found that when leveling SLI wasn't worth me waiting a whole rotation to do some decent damage. Used mainly as an offsoul. Riftblade - Solid magic DPS tree. Has some ranged abilities, best paired with paladin due to the one hander damage increase talent giving a boost to all the riftblades abilities. Meaning that you can use a sword and board for extra defense without sacrificing a significant amount of damage. Has self healing at 44 points. Best paired with defensive souls. Warriors are the easiest class to macro as well you can basically put everything into one button if you are so inclined.

» Edited on: 2011-04-28 20:12:20

Thank you all ! I'm still undecided where to take her (she's only 10 right now), but I at least now have a much clearer idea of the different souls and which might suit my playstyle better. Onward down the unfamiliar path and the potential for many laughs at my own expense :) *cheers*