With the announcement of TBC (damn excited!) I am planning to prepare a warrior character and have been doing extensive research to only get more confused. I am going to mainly PVP focusing on arena and DPS in raids. Tanking is something I might do for dungeons with my friends or in easier raids.
The obvious choices are Orcs, Taurens and Undeads. Each have great racial abilities, but who’s the winner? Here are some my thoughts going into the decision making process.
Orc - hardiness great against stuns, hence good against rogues, paladins and druids in form, who in total have 4 stuns. Anyone else has a stun? Apart from Blood Fury giving some AP which is nice, how practical is its usage to burst down enemies? I see blood fury to be somewhat similar to paladin’s wings, its main purpose is to have a window opportunity to burst kill.
Tauren - knowing that stamina is king for PVP, how significant is endurance (5% stamina increase)? Anyone knows average HP of warriors in TBC, so to measure the percentage increase? What do people think of War Stomp? Could it be a game changer and how practical is it in PVP (duels, arena and BGs)? How significant is Tauren hitbox in PVP and is it going to remain in TBC? Someone posted a thread on reddit saying it gives 2.55 yards. Given warriors are melee, is 2.55 yards significant?
Undead - with TBC one could expect a lot of warlocks, hence WOTF would be super effective, also against priests and warriors too. That’s a good counter to three classes. Cannibalism could see somewhat usage too in BGs.
My thoughts - given that warriors are already pretty strong against fear having the PVP trinket and Berserker Rage, wouldn’t WOTF be a bit of an overkill? In Vanilla the only way to obtain stun resistance was via Orc’s racial hardiness. With TBC they added the ‘Iron Will’ talent to arms, so that non-Orc warriors would have access to stun resist as well. Given that, doesn’t it make hardiness less desired since you will already some stun resist? At last, as contradicting as it may sound ‘Second Wind’ talent only procs when getting stunned, so in some sense there is some benefit to getting stunned. Personally I am most excited about Taurens for their higher HP pool (this I assume becomes more effective since Second Wind heals on percentage base, hence higher HP means more healing value) and War Stomp which I see could having a lot of practical applications to it e.g. window for one last hit, prevent escape or heal, allow distance yourself for ‘Intercept’
But again, if I was 100% sure about my race choice I wouldn’t put together this thread. This are only my thoughts after doing some research and I do not have any significant practical experience with warriors. Looking forward to hearing some opinions on this!