Warriors in World of Warcraft vanilla
I have played a warrior since the launch of World of Warcraft. A lot has changed since I started in the tank and damage per second (dps) aspects for warriors and I hope to shed some light on the history of warriors here.
Warriors used to be WoW’s bread and butter class, cementing their role in Player vs Environment (PvE) as the only “real” tank class when Vanilla WoW was released. Raids like Molten Core (MC), Blackwing Lair (BWL), Naxxaramus (Naxx) often required at least 3 warriors just to fill tank roles for different encounters. In essence, the class hasn’t changed much with the abilities used for the tank, however it must be emphasized that the area of effect (AOE) tank back then was practically non-existent with Blizzard choosing fewer but stronger mobs over many mobs than they would. hit for less. Skills like armor break, heroic strike, revenge, and shield lock (used to be on 20 second cooldown) made up most of the tank rotation, while Shield Wall and Last Stand remain more or less the same as they are today.
Though primarily in tank roles, vanilla war DPS shouldn’t be taken for granted either. When the arena didn’t exist, Blizzard often didn’t balance classes as strictly and there was definitely an imbalance between different players with different gear levels. It was the time when highly skilled players could shoot players of the same level without any equipment. Warriors enjoyed the love of blizzards with the blessing of multiple legendary weapons (when some other classes didn’t have any), items like Hammer of Ragnaros and Thunderfury turned anyone wielding such weapons into PvE and PvP roster monsters. It should also be noted that due to the lack of DPS meters, it was often difficult to measure the relative effectiveness of classes with many players interpreting “large numbers” as high DPS. Weapons was the DPS specialization, as weapons of fury were hard to come by (given to rogues first) and produced better numbers with 2-handed abilities, such as killing blow shining in both PvE and PvP situations.